Dune Best Quotes

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck. Darwi Odrade - Chapterhouse: Dune

There are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness.

The best place for discovering what a man is is the heart of the desert. Your plane has broken down, and you walk for hours, heading for the little fort at Nutchott. You wait for the mirages of thirst to gape before you. But you arrive and you find an old sergeant who has been isolated for months among the dunes, and he is so happy to be found that he weeps. And you weep, too. In the arching immensity of the night, each tells the story of his life, each offers the other the burden of memories in which the human bond is discovered. Here two men can meet, and they bestow gifts upon each other with the dignity of ambassadors.

Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.

There on the dune, beside the table, one of the camel boys has his arm around the other, and they sit there like that as they watch the sun. The dunes are turning the same shades of adobe and aqua as the buildings of Marrakech. Two boys, arms around each other. To Less, it seems so foreign. It makes him sad. In his world, he never sees straight men doing this. Just as a gay couple cannot walk hand in hand down the streets of Marrakech, he thinks, two men, best friends, cannot walk hand in hand down the streets of Chicago. They cannot sit on a dune like these teenagers and watch a sunset in each other’s embrace. This Tom Sawyer love for Huck Finn.

Monarchies have some good features beyond their star qualities. They can reduce the size and parasitic nature of the management bureaucracy. They can make speedy decisions when necessary. They fit an ancient human demand for a parental (tribal/feudal) hierarchy where every person knows his place. It is valuable to know your place, even if that place is temporary. It is galling to be held in place against your will. This is why I teach about tyranny in the best possible way—by example.

A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel... he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men... a good ruler has to learn his world's language... it's different for every world... the language of the rocks and growing things... the language you don't hear just with your ears... the Mystery of Life... not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience... Understanding must move with the flow of the process.

She asked me to tell her what it is to rule,” Paul said. “And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do.” She hit a mark there right enough, Hawat thought. He nodded for Paul to continue. “She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men.

Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.

Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine, there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required.

These are illusions of popular history which successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumpths; a good deed is its own rewards; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness

Come, come," the Baron said. "We don't have much time and pain is quick. Please don't bring it to this, my dear Duke." The Baron looked up at Piter who stood at Leto's shoulder. "Piter doesn't have all his tools here, but I'm sure he could improvise." "Improvisation is sometimes the best, Baron.

She had married him because she felt sage, because she'd had enough pain to last her a lifetime, and because although he had many faults, faults she was aware of before she married him, she knew he wouldn't hurt her. She knew because there was no passion, and the only time she had felt passion, it had come with a price.

Axiom: the best place to conserve your water is in your body. It keeps your energy up. You’re stronger. Trust your stillsuit.” She

Humans live best when each has his place to stand, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve. Destroy the place and you destroy the person.

One of the best ways to feel better when you’re sad is to do something meaningful for someone else.

You aren’t exactly best friends with the truth yourself.

Silence is often the best thing to say,

The best art imitates life in a compelling way. If it imitates a dream, it must be a dream of life. Otherwise, there is no place where we can connect. Our plugs don't fit.

The last words of Finny's usual nighttime monologue were, 'I hope you're having a pretty good time here. I know I kind of dragged you away at the point of a gun, but after all you can't come to the shore with just anybody and you can't come by yourself, and at this teen-age period in life the proper person is your best pal.' He hesitated and then added, 'which is what you are,' and there was silence on his dune. It was a courageous thing to say. Exposing a sincere emotion nakedly like that at the Devon School was the next thing to suicide. I should have told him then that he was my best friend also and rounded off what he said. I started to; I nearly did. But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by the level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.

Back in the day, the story goes, four science fiction writers - Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert and L Ron Hubbard - were hanging out late at night in 1940 in LA, drinking and putting the world to rights. They made a bet, who could dream up the best religion? Asimov explained in a TV interview in the 1980s that it was more of a dare than a true bet, and the goal was not a religion proper but ‘who can make the best religious story.’ The results were ‘Nightfall’ by Asimov, ‘Dune’ by Herbert, ‘Job’ by Heinlein and ‘Dianetics’ by Hubbard. If the first version of the story is true, Hubbard won the bet. They

They displayed a sophistication in warfare as good as anything he had ever encountered, and he had been trained by the best fighters in the universe then seasoned in battles where only the superior few survived.

Religion always leads to rhetorical despotism," Leto said. "Before the Bene Gesserit, the Jesuits were the best at it." "Jesuits, Lord?" "Surely you've met them in your histories?" "I'm not certain, Lord. When were they?" "No matter. You learn enough about rhetorical despotism from a study of the Bene Gesserit. Of course, they do not begin by deluding themselves with it." "It leads to self-fulfilling prophecy and justifications for all manner of obscenities," Leto said. "This . . . rhetorical despotism, Lord?" "Yes! It shields evil behind walls of self-righteousness which are proof against all arguments against the evil.

These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness … —From the Instruction Manual: Missionaria Protectiva

I will tell you this only once. Homosexuals have been among the best warriors in our history, the berserkers of last resort. They were among our best priests and priestesses. Celibacy was no accident in religions. It is also no accident that adolescents make the best soldiers.

These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness . . .

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be started this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.

Ten years ago a book appeared in France called D'Une foi l'autre, les conversions a l'Islam en Occident. The authors, both career journalists, carried out extensive interviews with new Muslims in Europe and America. Their conclusions are clear. Almost all educated converts to Islam come in through the door of Islamic spirituality. In the middle ages, the Sufi tariqas were the only effective engine of Islamisation in Muslim minority areas like Central Asia, India, black Africa and Java; and that pattern is maintained today. Why should this be the case? Well, any new Muslim can tell you the answer. Westerners are in the first instance seeking not a moral path, or a political ideology, or a sense of special identity - these being the three commodities on offer among the established Islamic movements. They lack one thing, and they know it - the spiritual life. Thus, handing the average educated Westerner a book by Sayyid Qutb, for instance, or Mawdudi, is likely to have no effect, and may even provoke a revulsion. But hand him or her a collection of Islamic spiritual poetry, and the reaction will be immediately more positive. It is an extraordinary fact that the best-selling religious poet in modern America is our very own Jalal al-Din Rumi. Despite the immeasurably different time and place of his origin, he outsells every Christian religious poet. Islam and the New Millennium

Galen doesn’t get truly nervous until he senses the size of the Syrena mass coming toward them. Up until this point, he’d been worried about Emma. What she thought about all this. Her mother’s reunion with Grom. What she planned to do while they were gone. Whether or not she was going to keep her promise and stay out of the water. And…his thoughts keep wandering back to their kiss between the sand dunes. It was an exquisite torture, the way she tasted like a mixture of salt water and herself. A combination of two things he’s come to cherish. Water and land. Syrena world and human world. Love for his kind and love for Emma. Only now, as the party of Syrena approaches, its presence seems to encroach on Galen’s options. For some reason, it feels like a choice between water or land, Syrena world or human world, love for his kind or love for Emma. According to the law, there never was a choice. But that was before Emma. And Galen has the feeling that the time for truly deciding between the two is closing in on him. But haven’t I already made that decision? He steals a glance at Toraf, who’s been wearing the same grim expression since they left Emma’s house. Toraf is never grim. Since they were fingerlings, he’s always had a special talent for finding the positive in a situation, and if not the positive, then he can certainly find mischief in a situation. But not now. Now he’s keeping to himself. Toraf never keeps to himself. Even Grom, the usual sealed-up clam, has become boisterous and enlivened while he and Nalia chatter to each other, laughing and whispering and holding hands, all the while speculating over the events that separated them so long ago. But Toraf seems oblivious to the chatter and to Galen’s internal war of emotions and to the swarm of jellyfish he just narrowly avoided. Galen had thought Toraf might have been anxious about leaving Rayna behind. Usually, though, he comforts himself by talking about her until Galen wishes he’d had a twin brother instead of a twin sister. No, what’s troubling Toraf has nothing to do with leaving Rayna behind. He even persuaded her to stay. Which means he thinks it’s safer for her on land right now. Toraf’s motives are always simple: do what’s best for Rayna, in spite of Rayna.

It was a damned near-run thing, I must admit,' said Jack, modestly; then after a pause he laughed and said, 'I remember your using those very words in the old Bellerophon, before we had our battle.' 'So I did,' cried Dundas. 'So I did. Lord, that was a great while ago.' 'I still bear the scar,' said Jack. He pushed up his sleeve, and there on his brown forearm was a long white line. 'How it comes back,' said Dundas; and between them, drinking port, they retold the tale, with minute details coming fresh to their minds. As youngsters, under the charge of the gunner of the Bellerophon, 74, in the West Indies, they had played the same game. Jack, with his infernal luck, had won on that occasion too: Dundas claimed his revenge, and lost again, again on a throw of double six. Harsh words, such as cheat, liar, sodomite, booby and God-damned lubber flew about; and since fighting over a chest, the usual way of settling such disagreements in many ships, was strictly forbidden in the Bellemphon, it was agreed that as gentlemen could not possibly tolerate such language they should fight a duel. During the afternoon watch the first lieutenant, who dearly loved a white-scoured deck, found that the ship was almost out of the best kind of sand, and he sent Mr Aubrey away in the blue cutter to fetch some from an island at the convergence of two currents where the finest and most even grain was found. Mr Dundas accompanied him, carrying two newly sharpened cutlasses in a sailcloth parcel, and when the hands had been set to work with shovels the two little boys retired behind a dune, unwrapped the parcel, saluted gravely, and set about each other. Half a dozen passes, the blades clashing, and when Jack cried out 'Oh Hen, what have you done?' Dundas gazed for a moment at the spurting blood, burst into tears, whipped off his shirt and bound up the wound as best he could. When they crept aboard a most unfortunately idle, becalmed and staring Bellerophon, their explanations, widely different and in both cases so weak that they could not be attempted to be believed, were brushed aside, and their captain flogged them severely on the bare breech. 'How we howled,' said Dundas. 'You were shriller than I was,' said Jack. 'Very like a hyena.

My Fish Speakers are a temporary army in every sense. While they can be violent and vicious, women are profoundly different from men in their dedication to battle. The cradle of genesis ultimately predisposes them to behavior more protective of life. They have proved to be the best keepers of the Golden Path.

She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men.

Tell me, sweetheart, what do you love best in the world right now?” Ayaana deflected: “Pate.” Delaksha said, “I never made it there. A pity.” Nioreg asked, “What’s to love?” The ideal of home, which distance amplified. Ayaana tuned into a vision of home as if she were a home-comer. Her face softened as she clothed her island in her mother’s scents and the Almighty’s stars. In Ayaana’s grammar, her listeners glimpsed Muhidin and Munira, witnessed the surge of Pate’s moonlit seas from a sand dune and smelled a jasmine infused night. Ayaana’s Pate was an antidote to desecrated worlds, so that when Ayaana finished her remembering, there was silence. She picked her chopsticks as the ocean whooshed answerless questions. Nioreg’s tough-man mask slipped. “Miss Ayaana, we shall visit your home, yes?” Delaksha took Ayaana’s hands. “Don’t let the world change you.” Delaksha was addressing both Ayaana and Pate.

The prophet is not diverted by illusions of past, present and future. The fixity of language determines such linear distinctions. Prophets hold a key to the lock in a language. The mechanical image remains only an image to them. This is not a mechanical universe. The linear progression of events is imposed by the observer. Cause and effect? That's not it at all. The prophet utters fateful words. You glimpse a thing "destined to occur." But the prophetic instant releases something of infinite portent and power. The universe undergoes a ghostly shift. Thus, the wise prophet conceals actuality behind shimmering labels. The uninitiated then believe the prophetic language is ambiguous. The listener distrusts the prophetic messenger. Instinct tells you how the utterance blunts the power of such words. The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself.

Zoey propped herself up on her elbows so she could meet her aunt’s eyes as she replied, “Aunt Ivy, you helped Aunt Sylvia just as much as she helped you. You took her into your home when she had nowhere else to go. You loved her like a sister and you helped her raise her son. And to some extent, her grandson. You’ve nurtured me, too, by being a constant, loving presence in my life. By sharing your heart and your humor and your home. Most of my best, most fun memories are of being here with you and Aunt Sylvia and my mom and sister. And I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been able to come to the island over the years to be refreshed and get my head together. So whatever little bit of help I can give you now pales in comparison to all you’ve given me.

You may have made some mistakes, but as you once told me, no one gets it right all the time. The important thing is you’ve acted out of love. Out of a fierce desire to do what’s in your family’s best interest.

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These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness . . .

The best art imitates life in a compelling way. If it imitates a dream, it must be a dream of life. Otherwise, there is no place where we can connect. Our plugs don’t fit.

Patience is a weapon best wielded by one who knows his specific target. —IBLIS GINJO, Options for Total Liberation

The Exodus scenes were filmed in the sand dunes of Guadalupe, California, and DeMille transported hundreds of Orthodox Jews from New York, because he believed that “in appearance and in their deep feeling of the significance of the Exodus, they would give the best possible performance as the Children of Israel.” But on their first day on set, the extras were forced to fast because the commissary served ham for dinner.

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When Children of Dune came out in hardback in 1976, it was an instant best seller. True to the prediction of David Hartwell and the gut feeling of my father, it became the top-selling hardback in science fiction history up to that time . . . more than 100,000 copies in a few months. When the novel came out in paperback the following year, Berkley Books initially printed 750,000 copies. That wasn’t half enough, and they went back to press. Six months after the release of the paperback, Dad said paperback sales were approaching two million copies.

Rules build up fortifications behind which small minds create satrapies. A perilous state of affairs in the best of times, disastrous during crises.

Some problems are best solved with an optimistic approach. Optimism shines a light on alternatives that are otherwise not visible.

This has nothing to do with altruism or greed. Despite the best intentions, resources and raw materials do not appear like rainbows after a storm. Populations must be fed, ships must be fueled, energy must be produced and expended. Money is only a symbol, but economics is the engine that drives the whole machine. The piper must be paid.

The Duncans always think it odd that I choose women for combat forces, but my Fish Speakers are a temporary army in every sense. While they can be violent and vicious, women are profoundly different from men in their dedication to battle. The cradle of genesis ultimately predisposes them to behavior more protective of life. They have proved to be the best keepers of the Golden Path. I reinforce this in my design for their training. They are set aside for a time from ordinary routines. I give them special sharings which they can look back upon with pleasure for the rest of their lives. They come of age in the company of their sisters in preparation for events more profound. What you share in such companionship always prepares you for greater things. The haze of nostalgia covers their days among their sisters, making those days into something different than they were. That’s the way today changes history. All contemporaries do not inhabit the same time. The past is always changing, but few realize it. —THE STOLEN JOURNALS

Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.

Two people drift in a lifeboat on an uncharted sea. One says, “There! I see an island. Our best chance is to go ashore, build a shelter, and await rescue.” The other says, “No, we must go farther out to sea and hope to find the shipping lanes. That is our best chance.” Unable to agree, the two fight, the lifeboat capsizes, and they drown. This is the nature of humanity. Even if only two people are left in the entire universe, they will come to represent opposing factions. —

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play.

The best leaders assemble information and take actions that lead to political stability. The worst leaders dissemble information and generate chaos. —A lesson from Imperial history

he had been trained by the best fighters in the universe then seasoned in battles where only the superior few survived.

Drink all your water,” Paul said. “Axiom: the best place to conserve your water is in your body. It keeps your energy up. You’re stronger. Trust your stillsuit.

I’ve always yearned to be a black man, to have a black man’s soul, a black man's laughter. You know why? Because I thought you were diflFerent from us. Yes, I thought you were something special, something difiFerent on this sad earth of ours. I wanted to escape with you from the white man’s hollow materialism, from his lack of faith, his humble and frustrated sexuality, from his lack of joy, of laughter, of magic, of faith in the richness of after-life. encouragement and signs of gratitude or recognition have been very few, if any, along my road. If humanity can be compared to a tribe, then you may say I’m completely de-tribalized. You love Negroes out of sheer misanthropy, because you think they aren’t really men. in the end all human faces look alike with nothing bright or hopeful around me, except those distant stars— and even there, let’s be frank: it’s only their distance that gives them that purity and beauty ideals don't die— obliged to live on shit sometimes, but don’t die! the company a great cause always keeps: men of good will and those who exploit them your skin, you know, is worth no more than the elephants’ hide. In Gennany, at Belsen, during the war, it seems we used to make lampshades out of human skin— for your information. And don’t forget, Monsieur Saint- Denis, that we Germans have always been forerunners in everything ‘Women,’ I concluded rather bitterly, ‘have at their command certain means of persuasion which the best- organized police forces do not possess.’ The number of animals who lived in cruel suffering, sometimes for years, with bullets in their bodies, wounds growing deeper and deeper, gangrenous and swarming with ticks and flies, could not be estimated to change species, to come over to the elephants and live in the wilds among honest animals Always cheerful, with the cheerfulness of a man who has gone deep down into things and come back reassured. No one knew the desert better than Scholscher, who had spent so many nights alone there on the starlit dunes, and no one understood better than he did that need for protection which sometimes grips men’s hearts and drives them to give a dog the affection they dream so desperately of receiving themselves. by ‘defending the splendors of nature . . .’ He meant liberty.” Islam calls that ’the roots of heaven.’ and to the Mexican Indians it is of life’— the thing that makes both of them fall on their knees and raise their eyes and beat their tormented breasts. A need for protection and company, from which obstinate people like Morel try to escape by means of petitions, fighting committees, by trying to take the protection of species in their own hands. Our needs- for justice, for freedom and dignity— are roots of heaven that are deeply imbedded in our hearts, but of heaven itself men know nothing but the gripping roots ...” . . . And that girl sitting there in front of him with her legs crossed, with her nylon stockings and cigarette and that silent gaze, in which could be read that stubborn need, not so different from what Morel had seen in the eyes of the stray dogs at the pound. but not even all that was comic and childish about him could deprive him of the dignity conferred upon him by his love for his Maker. that human mass whose physical strength was nothing compared to the faith and spirit that dwelt in him. Three quarters of the Oul6 traditions and magic rites had to do with war or hunting while it's easy to suppress a magic tradition it's difficult to fill up the strange voids which it leaves in what you call the primitive psychology and what I call the human soul The roots of heaven are forever planted in their hearts, yet of heaven itself they seem to know nothing but the gripping roots It must be very consoling to take refuge in cynicism and to try and drown your own remorse in a consoling vision of universal swinishness, and you can always

In a society where hard data is uncertain at best, one must be careful to manipulate the truth. Appearance becomes reality. Perception becomes fact. Use this to your advantage. Empress Herade, A Primer on the Finer Points of Culture in the Imperium

But the prophetic instant releases something of infinite portent and power. The universe undergoes a ghostly shift. Thus, the wise prophet conceals actuality behind shimmering labels. The uninitiated then believe the prophetic language is ambiguous. The listener distrusts the prophetic messenger. Instinct tells you how the utterance blunts the power of such words. The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself.

Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things.

These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness . . . —FROM THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL:

These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness …

Even a Duke or an Emperor cannot always control the universe, young Master. It is best to be prepared for that eventuality.

Desert rose! Like the traveler who wants to go everywhere, Like the sunshine that falls on everything, I want to travel too, but in one direction, that can be anywhere, As long as it leads to you, because without you, the world means nothing, Like the desert I want to spread endlessly, Like the wind I desire to be free, And chase your mirages over sand dunes tirelessly, And then wherever you are, there I shall be, Like the desert let your love be clear and unobstructed, Like the calm of the desert let us spread everywhere, Then in this desert let everything else be restricted, Because I want it to be your representation everywhere, Like an oasis oozing from the bosom of the desert, Like the mirage of water to a thirsty desert wanderer on a hot day, Let your love just one feeling assert, That like an oasis you will flow through me everyday, Like the beautiful desert rose, Like the endless desert, Let your feelings of love within me repose, As I slowly, but surely into your devout disciple convert, Like it first my love, before you begin to love it, Like the desert rose then let me love you, And finally as I, my soul to you shall submit, Let me see the desert, the oasis and the desert rose, and eternity in you!

The best way to sleep is when the room is freezing cold, but your bed is comfy and warm

She noticed that Flicker still seemed nervous around mutants, but played nonstop with Runt, tossing tumbleweeds for him to fetch and tackling the dog on the dunes. And when she was fearful, the friends made each task into a small adventure, chattering to each other excitedly. Kozmo wanted to join in sometimes, but it was hard to be a third friend with best friends.

He is living proof that there is little difference between the police mind and the military mind. I told him, “Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck. —DARWI ODRADE

Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person

The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself.

Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person. You and I, Thufir, of all those who love the Duke, are most ideally situated to destroy the other’s place.

Les souvenirs de nos exploits s'estompent, murmura-t-il, et ne sont bientôt plus que des anecdotes exagérées, aussi peu convaincantes que les mensonges d'un autre salaud. Mais nos échecs, nos déceptions, nos regrets... eux ne s'estompent jamais. Le sourire d'une jolie fille qu'on a laissée filer. Une faute mesquine qu'on n'a pas endossée. Une épaule anonyme qui nous a bousculés dans une foule et nous fait ruminer pendant des jours, des mois. Pendant une éternité. C'est de ça qu'est fait le passé, ajouta-t-il e, souriant. Les sales moments qui font de nous ce que nous sommes.

Changing sea levels have refined the palm’s understanding of the coast, an understanding coded in its genes and its relationship with both its physical and biological companions. For the few seeds that successfully germinate and become trunked palm trees, the plants life span often spreads beyond the century mark. Exactly how long sabal palms can live is unknown. Their trunks leave no tree rings of accumulating dead tissues. Our best estimates, though, suggest that about one hundred generations separate the sabal palm on the St. Catherines dune from the palms that grew at the end of the Ice Age, along shorelines one hundred kilometers east of the modern coast.

In deceptively brief terms, Edison tells us: “I make trial after trial until it comes.” He and his team were willing to perspire, but he also knew what he would be doing with all those hours: trial and error. For the lightbulb, filaments were the key, and bamboo was the most promising material, so Edison tested every kind of bamboo to find the best. If Burns is to be believed, there were twelve hundred varieties of bamboo, and Edison tried each one. It sounds simple, and it was, but the way Edison defined the project also gave it a shape. He crossed off items from a to-do list. When we made our porting strategy for the web browser, we turned to something like Edison’s model. We knew the compiler would tell us about broken cross-references, and we examined all of them one at a time. We knew our FIXMEs would tell us where our code was weakest, and we studied the reports closely. Moving toward the Black Slab Encounter was a stepwise process, much like Edison’s search for the best bamboo. Edison did trial after trial with filaments; we went file after file in our build process and FIXME after FIXME trying to load a web page. Both projects were built on unglamorous grunt work, but the specifics matter. Edison wasn’t just trudging toward the horizon in a desert, hoping that the crest of the next sand dune would reveal an oasis—that sounds more like the way that Don and I wandered through our browser investigations in the weeks before Richard joined us. Instead, Edison searched specifically for the best kind of bamboo, and he was undaunted by the need to check a vast number of varieties. Each one he tested was an item crossed off and brought him closer to finding which one was the best. In the lead up to the Black Slab Encounter, we did the same. Even though Don, Richard, and I struggled with the tedium, we kept plowing through each file and FIXME.

Wizard-style renewable advocates like the venture-capital-backed firm that built Crescent Dunes scoff at these ideas. Even in the best of circumstances, the process of replacing the present coal-and-gas grid with a new, renewable-energy grid—all the while keeping the old grid running—would be long, expensive, and risky even if it weren’t being sabotaged by the people who are supposed to support it. Insisting on using small-scale components to build in a world of 10 billion only multiplies the difficulty. Now add in the fact that fossil-fuel prices have been declining for decades. Thinking purely in terms of a reliable energy supply, one is hard-pressed to imagine why one would try to do

Humans live best when each has his place to stand, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve. Destroy the place and you destroy the person. —BENE GESSERIT TEACHING

Best of Death Valley Attraction: Zabriskie Point Runner-up: Titus Canyon 2nd Runner-up: The Racetrack 3rd Runner-up: Dante’s View 4th Runner-up: Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes