Kath Quotes

I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.

Dat's what they say of this cauntry back home, Kath: 'America, the land of milk and honey.' Bot they never tell you the milk's gone sour and the honey's stolen.

A few minutes later, he said suddenly: 'Kath, can we stop? I'm sorry, I need to get out a minute.' ...I could make out in the mid-distance, near where the field began to fall away, Tommy's figure, raging, shouting, flinging his fists and kicking out. I caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight, caked in mud and distorted with fury, then I reached for his failing arms and held on tight. He tried to shake me off, but I kept holding on, until he stopped shouting and I felt the fight go out of him. Then I realised he too had his arms around me. And so we stood together like that, at the top of the field, for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us being swept away into the night.

She wondered where Kath was. She wondered if Kath could sense her, sitting here on this train as it took her away. Perhaps it was possible, if she closed her eyes and sent out her thoughts along the steel track like a message along a telegraph wire. I love you. I love you. The train swayed gently beneath her, and she leaned against the window to feel the cool glass against her cheek, and she was sure that Kath had heard her, she was sure.

To work and work and never mind why; if you kept looking for the why behind everything you might never work again, you might never bother to breathe again.

Sorrow is humbling. I want my pain to be fabulous. I don't need my pain to be worse than anyone else's; I just want it to be strangely, uniquely mine. Art to someone else's breakdown. — Thea Hillman, "Dear Kath After" from the anthology Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache

It didn't hurt, did it? When I hit you?" "Sure. Fractured skull. Concussion, the lot..." "But seriously, Kath. No hard feelings, right? I'm awfully sorry. I honestly am.

How am I supposed to know?” she asked instead. “What’s it supposed to be like?” Lana and Claire traded tiny smiles, and Claire asked gently, “What’s what supposed to be like?” Lily slumped back against the sofa, feeling boneless and muddled. “Falling in love, I guess.” “You’ll know,” Claire said. “It’s unmistakable.” (How she could recognize Kath at the other end of a crowded Galileo hallway by the way she walked.) “It’s like . . . well, it’s like falling,” Lana said. “Falling, or floating, or sinking.” (Every time they kissed.) “You won’t know which way is up.” “It’s like having a fever.” (The way the world seemed to narrow down to the tips of Kath’s fingers.) “It’s like being drunk—drunk for days.

The stage is not only a world apart, it is a myriad of worlds, and in those worlds a man can have anything he fancies, if only he believes in what he sees.

If I could have broken his neck I would have, just for the pleasure of the silence after the snap.

I'm just going to jump and say:hey Mom, Dad, I'm gay, What's for dessert?

If it were only feathers that could transform a sparrow into a peacock" -Liesl "A sparrow is beautiful in its own way. Don't force yourself to be a peacock, Liesl. Embrace your sparrow self. Look." -Kathe

It always pisses me off when I’m calling in to some Morning Zoo radio show to promote God-only-knows what—probably this book, so get ready, I’m comin’—when the DJ actually tries to convince me that there are as many female comics as male ones. Cue hypermasculine Morning Zoo Hacky McGee voice: “So Kath, I don’t know what you chicks are always complaining about.” To which I respond: “Really? Why don’t you call your local comedy club and ask for the Saturday night lineup? I guarantee you the male to female ratio is going to be about nine to one. You dick-wad.

You see, that hunger inside us, that ambition, or whatever you may choose to call it, is a compass really, a compass of true desire. And if you will be happy, you must follow that desire, no matter which way the needle points.

I’ll take my now, waking with a lover’s scent still on me, around me, take my hopes before they’re maybe tragedy; a good morning is still a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night.

I used to send my characters into a fire that necessarily consumed them, but I have learned, a little, how to send them through the fire to a new place. The characters who do not change — most notably Nakota in Cipher, Bibi in Skin, and Lena in Kink — are motivated by an essential selfishness or self-centeredness, an unwillingness to relinquish control to the process, a refusal to become.

Might as well tell you. In that shop we were in, they had this shelf with loads of records and tapes. So I was looking for the one you lost that time. Do you remember, Kath? I never told you at the time, but I tried really hard to find it. I remember looking for ages. And when it looked in the end like it wasn't going to turn up, I just said to myself, one day I'll go to Norfolk and I'll find it there for her.

Do you know the concept of karma? It’s kind of like a circle, or cause-and-effect, like a slow-tolling bell you rang maybe a year ago, five years ago, maybe in another lifetime if you believe in that. Karma means that what you do today, and why you do it, makes you who you are forever: as if you were clay, and every thought and action left a mark in that clay, bent it, shaped it, even ruined it… but with karma there are no excuses, no explanations, no I-didn’t-really-mean-it-so-can-I-have-some-more-clay. Karma takes everything you do very, very seriously.

If there is any God in this world, He lives in a theatre.

The verge, he likes to say. That's where we want them, the utter, utter verge.

You want me to explain myself! give me a brush, not a pen

Lily’s eyebrows shot up. “Me? Oh no. I’m no beauty queen.” Kath smiled a little. “I don’t know about that.

She opened my closet door just the tiniest crack. So I could breathe.

there is such peace in helplessness,

I am in the world to change the world.

and wasn’t rust growth, of a kind? the growth of decay? If you don’t grow, you die;

The saga of their lives and the dynasty they would establish was also the story of a century of American capitalism. The three brothers had purchased Purdue Frederick back in the 1950s. “It was a much smaller company, originally,” Kathe said. “It was a small family business.

Recalling those gone times, old memories lit by the fire of the new, I did not this time wonder how long it would last; I was too smart for that now. Take what you get, and don't think. Of course it could never be that easy, but there were moments, like now, that I could successfully pretend that it was, and I had no inclination to try to peer past those moments. I'm not one who wants to know the future: at the best it spoils the present, with longing or dismay, and at the worst, well. Who really wants to find out how tight the sling is, for your own very personal ass, who wants to know how deep the shit will really be. Not you. Not me either. Because it's rarely bliss saved up, is it, when you finally get there. I'll take my now, waking with a lover's scent on me, around me, take my hopes before they're maybe tragedy; a good morning is a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night.

I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how I think it is with us. It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.

Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to have nothing keeping you attached to the ground? When we were taking off, the plane was rolling along the runway on its wheels, right? You could feel every bump and every jolt. And it went faster and faster and then all of a sudden—nothing.” Kath snapped her fingers, the excitement of the memory suffusing her face in a rosy glow. “The wheels lift off the ground, and you don’t feel it anymore. There are no more bumps. Everything is miraculously smooth. You feel like—well, like a bird! Nothing’s holding you down. You’re floating. You’re flying. And the ground just falls away below you, and you look out the window and everything becomes more and more distant, and none of it matters anymore. You’re up in the air.

I keep thinking about this river . . . two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current is too strong. They’ve got to let go . . . It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But, in the end, we can’t stay together forever.

Fece una risata e mi circondò con un braccio, mentre rimanevamo seduti l'uno accanto all'altra. Poi aggiunse: "Continuo a pensare a un fiume da qualche parte là fuori, con l'acqua che scorre velocissima. E quelle due persone nell'acqua, che cercano di tenersi strette, più che possono, ma alla fine devono desistere. La corrente è troppo forte. Devono mollare, separarsi. È la stessa cosa per noi. È un peccato, Kath, perché ci siamo amati per tutta la vita. Ma alla fine non possiamo rimanere insieme per sempre.

[Lindsay] But I don't want to think about all that now, Boring Blake and his broken heart which is really his deflated dick, that's all he cares about anyway...

It's our damage that makes us interesting.

I knew that change was coming, the way you know things you can't see, by feeling them; by instinct. The way the bees know everything they know.

You can know something and never think about it, if you’re any good at it. Me, now, I’ve been avoiding so much for so long that the real trick becomes thinking straight. Beside

The worst wounds are internal, I should have known that from my own experience, but I’m the type of guy who doesn’t learn.

There is a holiness about your tears. Each one is a prayer that only God can understand. KATHE WUNNENBURG

Richard’s cousin Kathe Sackler would claim that it was she who first suggested oxycodone

I wasn’t sure you felt that way,” Kath said, and came closer to Lily. “I mean, I hoped.

Lust makes people blind, I guess. All he ever wanted was a pretty girl to believe in him and Kath made him believe what he always wanted to believe

Kath asleep (and snoring with her mouth open!) in the tack room.

For like a lot of young Moirans, Kath Two didn’t even try to establish a fixed home. With a home came a social circle, and perhaps a family.

-No creo que sea necesariamente malo. Una vez que encuentres a alguien, Kath, al alguien con quien realmente quieras estar, entonces será estupendo.

Husband, let’s follow, to see the end of this ado.   95 Pet.  First kiss me, Kate, and we will. Kath.  What! in the midst of the street? Pet.  What! art thou ashamed of me?

...sitting in the sand with her back against a log, crying. She smiled at Kath, she said, 'don't think I'm sad'.

Lily began to skirt the edge of the living room, going around the dancing couples, and caught Kath’s eye on the way. Kath rose from the couch immediately, nearly spilling her drink.

Just remember, Kath, the instinct to survive applies to both sides. Every family court judge knows there are three sides to every separation story, the woman's side, the man's side and the truth

Mindig az jár a fejemben, hogy van valahol egy folyó, aminek nagyon gyors a sodrása. És ott a vízben az a két ember, és kapaszkodnak egymásba, kapaszkodnak, ahogy csak tudnak, de végül nem bírják tovább. Túlságosan erős az áramlat. El kell engedniük egymást, és elsodródnak egymástól. Úgy érzem, hogy velünk is ez a helyzet. Igazán kár, Kath, mert egész életünkben szerettük egymást. Mégsem maradhatunk együtt örökre.

Whether it was Anne and the girls, or me with Bunty or Kath or Thelma, we were just the same. Sticking with each other through the best bits and the worst in the war, without even thinking—it was just what we did.

Kath reached for her arm and said, “Wait—wait.” Lily felt Kath’s hand slide down her arm and lodge around her wrist, then around her fingers, pulling her to a halt. “What happened?” Kath asked. “I know something happened.

Horsfall was fond of practical jokes. He once wired up a toilet seat to a battery and waited for a girlfriend to use it. 'The scream that Kath gave when the magneto was turned on was most satisfying,' he recalled. He even wrote a poem to commemorate the occasion. I gave her time to start her piddle Then gave the thing a violent twiddle Before I could complete a turn She closed the circuit with her stern, And shooting off the wooden seat Emitted a most piercing shriek.

When you work behind the ropes, you know the heartbreaking stories behind their smiles; you see the pins and nauseating amount of hair products that glaze their heads; and you see the wedges (even flats) under their eternally beaded gowns.

I was so tired of hating myself. But I was so good at it, it was such a comfortable way to be, goddamn fucking flotsam on the high seas, the low tide, a little wad of nothing shrugging and saying Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t know it was loaded, I didn’t think things would turn out this way. It’s so easy to be nothing. It requires very little thought or afterthought, you can always find people to drink with you, hang out with you, everybody needs a little nothing in their life, right?

Maddeningly beautiful. and faint as an insect choir, like standing in the dark and glimpsing—the barest peripheral, an image behind your eyelids—the passing of your one desire, close enough to nuzzle if you could only fix its motion, see it all the way.

Ruth told me she's prepared to call it quits and have you get back with her again. I think that's a good chance for you. Don't mess it up.” He was quiet for a few seconds, then said: “I don't know, Kath. There are all these other things to think about.

Making no living as a card-carrying poet had accustomed me to a philosophy that made minimalism seem lavish, I had lived like a cockroach for so long that a full tank, a full refrigerator were no longer even desirable: I mean, what would I do with it all?

You should have told me as soon as you saw me!' he shook her slightly. 'Don’t you know how dangerous he is?' 'Of course I do!' Kath said steadily, her mind finally working perfectly now that he seemed to be losing his. 'I was there the last time he attacked me!

The younger generation of Sacklers were becoming increasingly involved in the company. Richard officially joined the board in 1990, along with his brother, Jonathan, and Kathe and her sister, Ilene. The following year, the family created a new company, Purdue Pharma.

The truth is, she said, that she, Kathe, deserved credit for coming up with “the idea” for OxyContin. Her accusers were suggesting that OxyContin was the taproot of one of the most deadly public health crises in modern history, and Kathe Sackler was outing herself, proudly, as the taproot of OxyContin.

But that wasn't all.” Tommy‟s voice was now down to a whisper. “What she told Roy, what she let slip, which she probably didn't mean to let slip, do you remember, Kath? She told Roy that things like pictures, poetry, all that kind of stuff, she said they revealed what you were like inside. She said they revealed your soul.

All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well. Julian of Norwich

You can get used to being wrong all the time; it takes all the responsibility out of things.

He was a creature of cities, of pocket parks and dull anonymous bars; of waiting rooms and holding cells; of emergency clinics; of pain.

You always think you’d like it if the Twilight Zone came true. You can forget that shit.

And yet, despite everything I just shared, I still couldn’t admit to another person that I am lonely.

I walk to Starbucks for a quick caffeine fix when I hear a voice too familiar and annoying to be real. ‘Tsk tsk pati ba naman dito sinusundan mo ako? Grabe a, are you stalking me?

I never really understood what a three-year itch meant because I never felt it before. Before Johnny, my relationships had a four-month expiration date.

If I die of heatstroke, I want to be reincarnated as a beauty queen, I thought. Ma-experience ko man lang na sumakay ng pink na float at hindi maglakad habang nauusukan ng tambutso.

Tommy, you don’t seem very pleased for me,” I said, though in an obviously jokey voice. “I am pleased for you, Kath. It’s just that, well, I wish I’d found it.” Then he did a small laugh and went on: “Back then, when you lost it, I used to think about it, in my head, what it would be like, if I found it and brought it to you. What you’d say, your face, all of that.

In history, in a movie, in a book, you can always tell who the heroes are; they're the ones rushing into a burning building, giving crucial testimony in the courtroom, refusing to step to the back of the bus. They're the ones who act the way you hope you would, if the moment came to you. But the movies and the history books never tell you how they felt, those heroes, if they were angry or uncertain or afraid, if they had to think a long time before they did the right thing, if they even knew what the right thing was or just made a headlong guess, just leaped and hoped they landed instead of falling. They never tell you what it's like to stand on the brink, wishing you were somewhere--or someone--else, wishing the choice had never come your way and you could just go back to your safe, ordinary, everyday life. Because you know what else the books never say? Nobody, hero or not, really wants to rush into a fire. Because fire burns.

Îmi tot vine în minte o imagine cu un râu cu ape repezi. În apă sunt doi oameni care încearcă șă se țină unul e celălalt cât de tare pot, dar până la urmă e mult, mult prea greu. Curentul e mult prea puternic. Trebuie să-ți dea drumul unul altuia, să se despartă. Așa cred că e și cu noi. E mare păcat, Kath, pentru că noi ne-am iubit toată viața. Dar asta e. N-avem ce face. Nu putem rămâne împreună pe vecie.

keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how I think it is with us. It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.

All bodies are, in some sense; engines driven by the health or disease of their owners, jackets of flesh that are the physical sum of their wearers. But to become your disease? To become the consumption itself?

Then he said: “I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how I think it is with us. It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.

It won’t kill you, or him,” Raeshon replied, his voice slightly louder than usual. “It’s nothing physical.” “Physical I can handle,” Kaevin rasped in pain. “But this, this I don’t think I can.” Kath gasped as another wave of pain wracked through her heart and she fell onto her side. “It didn't know it would be this bad,” Raeshon said quietly, his posture tense. “I really didn't.” “I think you did,” Kaevin ground out. “And I think you didn't care.

So what are you saying?” Keath asked, though it was clear he was dreading the answer. “I’m saying is that I don’t want to be a part of this. I want my life to stay the way it is, and that means I can’t be a friend of yours. I don’t want any part of the faerie world.” “That’s how normal people are supposed to react when they find out about all this,” Carlow said, looking pointedly at Kath and Katie, who just shrugged. They had never pretended to be normal.

John’s eyes turned to me. I saw no resignation in them, no hope of heaven, no dawning peace. How I would love to tell you that I did. How I would love to tell myself that. What I saw was fear, misery, incompletion, and incomprehension. They were the eyes of a trapped and terrified animal. I thought of what he’d said about how Wharton had gotten Cora and Kathe Detterick off the porch without rousing the house: He kill them with they love. That’s how it is every day. All over the worl’.

smile again, something older, colder than reptilian, cold as the oldest brain of all speaking, short wordless bursts, the back of the back of the skull: “Let’s see,” she said, “who can keep the most secrets. And be the most surprised in the end.

She felt Kath's hand letting go of hers again and again; her fingers sliding through hers over and over. Everything she and Kath had done could be erased so easily. It could be erased by her family pretending it had never happened. It could be erased by her parents uprooting her from her home and sending her away so that Kath would not know where she was. It could be erased because they were her parents and she was their daughter, and they loved her, and she could not disobey them even if it broke her heart.

In his comfortable coffin, face veiled in dark silk, eyes open or closed, Pan Loudermilk lies waiting, a player from a tribe never stilled so much as gathered, potential as potent as a knife in the scabbard, a poem in the mind, a wind that rises as a breeze in the tropics, later to lash the wintry coastline, and smash its boats and sailors on the shore. Or perhaps that is purest make-believe, as a puppet is only a tool, made of wood, and wool, and wire. As we are blood, and fancy, and bites of bone and dream.

Why are you telling me this?” Kath protested, getting to her feet. Keath was telling her how to kill him. “I just need you to know.” Keath got to his feet too. He reached out and up his hands firmly on her shoulders, looking into her eyes. She wanted to look away but she couldn’t. There was something in Keath’s eyes. He was afraid of something, something he didn't want to tell her, as though he didn't want to scare her anymore. “I want to know that if it I need to be stopped,” Keath continued. “You will be able to stop me. Just promise me that you will, Kathleen.

Gone as usual in the morning, and me left behind and naked, inner thighs lightly scaled with the dried spoor of our lovemaking: she liked to stay on top afterward and let the juice run down, and I liked whatever she liked. Imagining in the shower that I could smell her still, the angular scent of those secret bones, had she always smelled so fierce and so good? Recalling those gone times, old memories lit by the fire of the new, I did not this time wonder how long it would last; I was too smart for that now. Take what you get, and don’t think. Of course it could never be that easy, but there were moments, like now, that I could successfully pretend that it was, and I had no inclination to try to peer past those moments. I’m not one who wants to know the future: at the best it spoils the present, with longing or dismay, and at the worst, well. Who really wants to find out how tight the sling is, for your own very personal ass, who wants to know how deep the shit will really be? Not you. Not me either. Because it’s rarely bliss saved up, is it, when you finally get there. I’ll take my now, waking with a lover’s scent on me, around me, take my hopes before they’re maybe tragedy; a good morning is still a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night.

Suppose some special arrangement has been made for Hailsham students. Suppose two people say they're truly in love, and they want extra time to be together. Then you see, Kath, there has to be a way to judge if they're really telling the truth. That they aren't just saying they're in love, just to defer their donations. You see how difficult it could be to decide? Or a couple might really believe they're in love, but it's just a sex thing. Or just a crush. You see what I mean, Kath? It'll be really hard to judge, and it's probably impossible to get it right every time. But the point is, whoever decides, Madame or whoever it is, they need something to go on.” I nodded slowly. “So that's why they took away our art…

They could remember the last Super Bowl and World Series and Olympics and the last movie they’d seen or concert they went to, but not when it was decided that there wouldn’t be another. The Fall didn’t leave a definitive mark on the memory of society, not like such a disaster should have. But personal memory remained. Kath always remembered exactly when her parents died, exactly the last time she spoke with her brother, and exactly when she herself left the old world behind. Right to the end, she’d been able to tell stories about her friends, the people who’d helped her and taken care of her, and spoken of where and how they died, from accident, disease, or simple old age. The world might not remember, but she would.

Do you remember that day in Senior Goals when you said it wasn't strange that I wanted to go to the moon?" "I remember." "I think that was the first day I really noticed you." "Took you that long?" Kath teased her. "Maybe I'm a late bloomer," Lily said tartly. "Why, when did you notice me?" Kath shot her a grin. "You really want to know?" "Yes!" "Well . . . last year, you helped me with a geometry proof. You probably don't remember. You do this thing where you . . ." Kath trailed off, looking a little shy. "What? What do I do?" "You chew on your lip when you do a difficult math problem," Kath said. "It's cute." Lily's face went red, and she laughed. "I'd better stop that in college, or no one with take me seriously.

I miss our own quiet country road. I miss the unmarked settler graves you found along it, that summer that we went bone-hunting. You were the one who could find the dead where the ground hid them under its skin. You are a better witch than I was. I admit it. I miss the way you smelled of witchcraft. Soot on your fingertips, sage and hyssop, sweet dock and cedar tips.

As the invaders caught the villagers and tore into them, they made soothing, crooning noises that somehow drowned out the shrieking. They strangled the villagers, tore their eyes out, opened their throats with sharp teeth. They rolled the bodies over the edge of the platform, into the sand. When they couldn’t find any more victims, they went into the little houses and closed the doors.   *

Charlie Pop is 15 years old. He has 2 dogs: Bruno and Rex. He lives with his parents Kath and Ron. Today is the 22nd April 2025. Charlie and his friends have been going to the Landfawcett space bowling club all their lives. Charlie’s friends are called Harry Em, Eric Tweet, Paul Key, Robert Storm, Chris Leaf, Jay Laugh, Darren Rain and Tom Breeze. They all have short hair and dress casually especially Ben Steps and George Sing. Jake Train is the cleverest of them all. He has invented a secret waterproof wireless finger camera that takes photographs; it is attached to Charlie and his friend’s fingers. Rex and Bruno have a camera attached to the fur on their heads. Images are shared with each other from the app recording onto their phones and laptops. It is their space bowling tournament today.

Thou hast hit it: come, sit on me. Kath. Asses are made to bear, and so are you. Pet. Women are made to bear, and so are you. Kath. No such jade as bear you, if me you mean.202 Pet. Alas! good Kate, I will not burden thee; For, knowing thee to be but young and light,— Kath. Too light for such a swain as you to catch, And yet as heavy as my weight should be. Pet. Should be! should buz! Kath. Well ta’en, and like a buzzard. Pet. O slow-wing’d turtle! shall a buzzard take thee?208 Kath. Ay, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard. Pet. Come, come, you wasp; i’ faith you are too angry. Kath. If I be waspish, best beware my sting. Pet. My remedy is, then, to pluck it out.212 Kath. Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies. Pet. Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail. Kath. In his tongue. Pet. Whose tongue? Kath. Yours, if you talk of tails; and so farewell.216 Pet. What! with my tongue in your tail? nay, come again.

Kath Two wondered, as she always did, whether the people of the Epic would have said and done some of what they had, had they known that, five thousand years later, billions of people would be watching them on video screens, citing them as examples, and quoting them from memory. Over the first few decades on Cleft, the cameras had died one by one. Depending on how you felt about ubiquitous surveillance, the result had either been a new Dark Age and an incalculable loss to history, or a liberation from digital tyranny. Either way, it signaled the end of the Epic: the painstakingly recorded account of everything that the people of the Cloud Ark had done from Zero onward. After that it had all been oral history for about a thousand years, since there had been no paper to write on and no ink to write on it with. Memory devices were scarce and jury-rigged. Every single chip had been used for critical functions such as robots and life support.

I was so tired of hating myself. But I was so good at it, it was such a comfortable way to be, goddamn fucking flotsam on the high seas, the low tide, a little wad of nothing shrugging and saying Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t know it was loaded, I didn’t think things would turn out this way. It’s so easy to be nothing. It requires very little thought or afterthought, you can always find people to drink with you, hang out with you, everybody needs a little nothing in their life, right? Call the specialist when you do. You don’t even have to call, chances are I’ll already be there, you’ve just overlooked me because I’m in a corner, crouched like a dustball, a cobweb, my busy little spaced-out grin and oops it seems I’ve stumbled on some sort of exalted hellhole, Funhole, do excuse me while I let it out, while I let it into my body, while I let it run my life because somebody has to, right? somebody has to take the goddamned brunt even if it’s a void.

The example cited most often was a gradual change in eye color among Moirans. Eve Moira’s eyes had been hazel: relatively light in color by the standards of black people, but not all that unusual. By the end of the Second Millennium, many Moirans had eyes so pale in color as to appear golden in strong light. On the walls of the Great Chain’s fashion stores, blown up to ten times life size, Moiran fashion models still gazed at you through shockingly yellow, catlike eyes. Because pale eyes had been a distinctive characteristic of Eve Moira, it had become thought of as beautiful and desirable, and Moirans with pale eyes had found it easier to mate and reproduce, intensifying the trait over time, to the point of caricature. Kath Two herself, no model, was frequently complimented on the lightness of her eyes, which were closer to green than yellow. But modern, appearance-conscious Moirans were frequently startled when they saw photographs of their Eve with her eyes that were merely greenish-brown.

So it was possible to look at actual smartphones and tablets and laptops that had been manufactured on Old Earth. They did not work anymore, but their technical capabilities were described on little placards. And they were impressive compared to what Kath Two and other modern people carried around in their pockets. This ran contrary to most people’s intuition, since in other areas the achievements of the modern world—the habitat ring, the Eye, and all the rest—were so vastly greater than what the people of Old Earth had ever accomplished. It boiled down to Amistics. In the decades before Zero, the Old Earthers had focused their intelligence on the small and the soft, not the big and the hard, and built a civilization that was puny and crumbling where physical infrastructure was concerned, but astonishingly sophisticated when it came to networked communications and software. The density with which they’d been able to pack transistors onto chips still had not been matched by any fabrication plant now in existence. Their devices could hold more data than anything you could buy today. Their ability to communicate through all sorts of wireless schemes was only now being matched—and that only in densely populated, affluent places like the Great Chain.

Glaucon, (1) the son of Ariston, had conceived such an ardour to gain the headship of the state that nothing could hinder him but he must deliver a course of public speeches, (2) though he had not yet reached the age of twenty. His friends and relatives tried in vain to stop him making himself ridiculous and being dragged down from the bema. (3) Socrates, who took a kindly interest in the youth for the sake of Charmides (4) the son of Glaucon, and of Plato, alone succeeded in restraining him. (1) Glaucon, Plato's brother. Grote, "Plato," i. 508. (2) "Harangue the People." (3) See Plat. "Protag." 319 C: "And if some person offers to give them advice who is not supposed by them to have any skill in the art (sc. of politics), even though he be good-looking, and rich, and noble, they will not listen to him, but laugh at him, and hoot him, until he is either clamoured down and retires of himself; or if he persists, he is dragged away or put out by the constables at the command of the prytanes" (Jowett). Cf. Aristoph. "Knights," 665, {kath eilkon auton oi prutaneis kai toxotai}. (4) For Charmides (maternal uncle of Plato and Glaucon, cousin of Critias) see ch. vii. below; Plato the philosopher, Glaucon's brother, see Cobet, "Pros. Xen." p. 28.

As it turned out, Mary Jo White and other attorneys for the Sacklers and Purdue had been quietly negotiating with the Trump administration for months. Inside the DOJ, the line prosecutors who had assembled both the civil and the criminal cases started to experience tremendous pressure from the political leadership to wrap up their investigations of Purdue and the Sacklers prior to the 2020 presidential election in November. A decision had been made at high levels of the Trump administration that this matter would be resolved quickly and with a soft touch. Some of the career attorneys at Justice were deeply unhappy with this move, so much so that they wrote confidential memos registering their objections, to preserve a record of what they believed to be a miscarriage of justice. One morning two weeks before the election, Jeffrey Rosen, the deputy attorney general for the Trump administration, convened a press conference in which he announced a “global resolution” of the federal investigations into Purdue and the Sacklers. The company was pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and to violate the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, as well as to two counts of conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-kickback Statute, Rosen announced. No executives would face individual charges. In fact, no individual executives were mentioned at all: it was as if the corporation had acted autonomously, like a driverless car. (In depositions related to Purdue’s bankruptcy which were held after the DOJ settlement, two former CEOs, John Stewart and Mark Timney, both declined to answer questions, invoking their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves.) Rosen touted the total value of the federal penalties against Purdue as “more than $8 billion.” And, in keeping with what had by now become a standard pattern, the press obligingly repeated that number in the headlines. Of course, anyone who was paying attention knew that the total value of Purdue’s cash and assets was only around $1 billion, and nobody was suggesting that the Sacklers would be on the hook to pay Purdue’s fines. So the $8 billion figure was misleading, much as the $10–$12 billion estimate of the value of the Sacklers’ settlement proposal had been misleading—an artificial number without any real practical meaning, designed chiefly to be reproduced in headlines. As for the Sacklers, Rosen announced that they had agreed to pay $225 million to resolve a separate civil charge that they had violated the False Claims Act. According to the investigation, Richard, David, Jonathan, Kathe, and Mortimer had “knowingly caused the submission of false and fraudulent claims to federal health care benefit programs” for opioids that “were prescribed for uses that were unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary.” But there would be no criminal charges. In fact, according to a deposition of David Sackler, the Department of Justice concluded its investigation without so much as interviewing any member of the family. The authorities were so deferential toward the Sacklers that nobody had even bothered to question them.

..."I know it is a trick, I mean a dupe, but still - Do you ever make him talk to you, alone? the two of you? No, that's silly, isn't it." "Not at all." Istvan pauses, considering, smiling, Rupert or Decca would recognize that smile. Finally "He sleeps," says Istvan, "with a black cloth across his face. It keeps his soul primed.... Does that give you your answer?" and before she can give him hers, continues: "They are toys, philosophical toys, as we are puppets really, to our base desires. Don't you see the same, in that Blue Room of yours? What man owns his soul in there? Does he not instead give it into your hands, to manipulate as you do his prick?" "Turn it like a crank," says Lucy, suddenly grinning, a funny wolfish look Istvan has never seen her wear: it surprises him into laughter, both of them chuckling as "We are so much alike, you and I," he says, bending to kiss her cheek. "Both of us vendors of the art of the moment, the impermanent pleasure, the will-o'-the-wisp that lifts a man from the prison of time, and for just that moment sets him free...

It was possible to look at actual smartphones and tablets and laptops that had been manufactured on Old Earth. They did not work anymore, but their technical capabilities were described on little placards. And they were impressive compared to what Kath Two and other modern people carried around in their pockets. This ran contrary to most people's intuition, since in other areas the achievements of the modern world - the habitat ring, the Eye, and all the rest - were so vastly greater than what the people of Old Earth had ever accomplished. It boiled down to Amistics [the choices that different cultures made as to which technologies they would, and would not, make part of their lives]. In the decades before Zero, the Old Earthers had focused their intelligence on the small and the soft, not the big and the hard, and built a civilization that was puny and crumbling where physical infrastructure was concerned, but astonishingly sophisticated when it came to networked communications and software. The density with which they'd been able to pack transistors onto chips still had not been matched by any fabrication plant now in existence. Their devices could hold more data than anything you could buy today. Their ability to communicate through all sorts of wireless schemes was only now being matched - and that only in densely populated, affluent places like the Great Chain... Anyone who bothered to learn the history of the developed world in the years just before Zero understood perfectly well that Tavistock Prowse had been squarely in the middle of the normal range, as far as his social media habits and attention span had been concerned. But nevertheless, Blues called it Tav's Mistake. They didn't want to make it again. Any efforts made by modern consumer-goods manufacturers to produce the kinds of devices and apps that had disordered the brain of Tav were met with the same instinctive pushback as Victorian clergy might have directed against the inventor of a masturbation machine. To the extent the Blue's engineers could build electronics of comparable sophistication to those that Tav had used, they tended to put them into devices such as robots...

Did you want it to be easy?” “No. I just want it to work.

Simple accident: a zombie-crewed containership from Southern Kath wrecked in a storm. The containership had been hired to transport a horror from beyond the stars, but the horror broke free and twisted a few hundred miles of Kathic coastline into unearthly geometries before the Coast Guard caught it. Resulting market fluctuations broke the Great Squid. Steve, the priest responsible, was promoted after the event, for exceptional skill managing a crisis,