Borders By Thomas King Quotes

I lived in New York City back in the 1980s, which is when the Bordertown series was created. New York was a different place then -- dirtier, edgier, more dangerous, but also in some ways more exciting. The downtown music scene was exploding -- punk and folk music were everywhere -- and it wasn't as expensive to live there then, so a lot of young artists, musicians, writers, etc. etc. were all living and doing crazy things in scruffy neighborhoods like the East Village. I was a Fantasy Editor for a publishing company back then -- but in those days, "fantasy" to most people meant "imaginary world" books, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. A number of the younger writers in the field, however, wanted to create a branch of fantasy that was rooted in contemporary, urban North America, rather than medieval or pastoral Europe. I'd already been working with some of these folks (Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, etc.), who were writing novels that would become the foundations for the current Urban Fantasy field. At the time, these kinds of stories were considered so strange and different, it was actually hard to get them into print. When I was asked by a publishing company to create a shared-world anthology for Young Adult readers, I wanted to create an Urban Fantasy setting that was something like a magical version of New York...but I didn't want it to actually be New York. I want it to be any city and every city -- a place that anyone from anywhere could go to or relate to. The idea of placing it on the border of Elfland came from the fact that I'd just re-read a fantasy classic called The King of Elfland's Daughter by the Irish writer Lord Dunsany. I love stories that take place on the borderlands between two different worlds...and so I borrowed this concept, but adapted it to a modern, punky, urban setting. I drew upon elements of the various cities I knew best -- New York, Boston, London, Dublin, maybe even a little of Mexico City, where I'd been for a little while as a teen -- and scrambled them up and turned them into Bordertown. There actually IS a Mad River in southern Ohio (where I went to college) and I always thought that was a great name, so I imported it to Bordertown. As for the water being red, that came from the river of blood in the Scottish folk ballad "Thomas the Rhymer," which Thomas must cross to get into Elfland. [speaking about the Borderland series she "founded" and how she came up with the setting. Link to source; Q&A with Holly, Ellen & Terri!]

The oldest [prophecies] have in many cases a quite distinct Arthurian tinge and cast. They are, indeed, exactly what was to be expected from one who lived in the period of the Rhymour, who was a strong patriotic Scot, who survived the death of Alexander, and was shrewd enough to discern the grasping ambition of the English king, and whose memory and imagination were full of the old Arthurian legends of the Lowlands. Such a man could not but see that the traditional oppression of the ancient Britons was about to be repeated on their Saxon successors: he believed and hoped in a final deliverance; and he readily adapted to the circumstances of his own time the floating legends of Cymric sufferings, temporary deliverance, and at least unsubdued hopes.

15 billion people were born in the 19th and 20th centuries but try to imagine how different the global economy and the whole world would be today if just seven of them never existed Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Gavrilo Princip, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Martin Luther King. I'm not even sure that's the most meaningful list. But almost everything about the world today from borders, to technology, to social norms would be different if these seven people hadn't left their mark. Another way to put this is that 0.000000 00004% of people were responsible for perhaps the majority of the world's direction over the last century. The same goes for projects innovations and events. Imagine the last century without the Great Depression, World War II, the Manhattan Project, vaccines. Antibiotics, ARPAnet, September 11th, the fall of the Soviet Union. How many projects and events occurred in the 20th century? Billions, trillions, who knows? But those eight alone impacted the world orders upon orders of magnitude more than others.

During Norman and Plantagenet days the English kings did not have large standing armies. The country was divided into wide tracts held by the barons, who were expected to join the king with all their dependents, armed and ready, in the event of war. There would have been small advantage in having standing armies because of the bad roads and the scarcity of bridges. The Scots could come down over the border and create havoc in the north, or the Welsh could issue out from their mountains and harry the western counties, and vanish into thin air, before the king with his trained troops could get to the scene of action. It was necessary, therefore, to maintain forces in the exposed areas which would always be ready to repel attack. This was done by a system of “farming out” the defense of the north and the west to certain great families. Whole counties were turned over to them, on their guarantee to maintain the safety of the borders.

Evan was born on June 4, 1990, to a pair of highly successful lawyers. His mother, Melissa Thomas, graduated from Harvard Law School and practiced tax law as a partner at a prominent Los Angeles firm before resigning to become a stay-at-home mother when Evan was young. His father, John Spiegel, graduated from Stanford and Yale Law School and became a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson, an elite firm started by Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger. His clients included Warner Bros. and Sergey Brin. Evan and his two younger sisters, Lauren and Caroline, grew up in Pacific Palisades, an upper-class neighborhood bordering Santa Monica in western Los Angeles. John had the kids volunteer and help build homes in poor areas of Mexico. When Evan was in high school, Melissa and John divorced after nearly twenty years of marriage. Evan chose to live with his father in a four-million-dollar house in Pacific Palisades, just blocks from his childhood home where his mother still lives. John let young Evan decorate the new home with the help of Greg Grande, the set designer from Friends. Evan decked out his room with a custom white leather king-size bed, Venetian plaster, floating bookshelves, two designer desk chairs, custom closets, and, of course, a brand new computer.