I Think The Easiest People To Fool

Mr Blawke Always Reminded Me Of A Heron; I'm Not Sure Why. Something To Do With A Sense Of Rapacious Stillness, Perhaps, And Also The Aura Of One Who Knows Time Is On His Side.

Half The Fun Of Writing A Novel Is Finding Out From Other People Later On What You Actually Meant.

Oh, They Never Lie. They Dissemble, Evade, Prevaricate, Confound, Confuse, Distract, Obscure, Subtly Misrepresent And Willfully Misunderstand With What Often Appears To Be A Positively Gleeful Relish And Are Generally Perfectly Capable Of Contriving To Give One An Utterly Unambiguous Impression Of Their Future Course Of Action While In Fact Intending To Do Exactly The Opposite, But They Never Lie. Perish The Thought.

An Outside Context Problem Was The Sort Of Thing Most Civilisations Encountered Just Once, And Which They Tended To Encounter Rather In The Same Way A Sentence Encountered A Full Stop.

Empires Are Synonymous With Centralized If Occasionally Schismatized Hierarchical Power Structures In Which Influence Is Restricted To An Economically Privileged Class Retaining Its Advantages Through Usually A Judicious Use Of Oppression And Skilled Manipulation Of Both The Society's Information Dissemination Systems And Its Lesser As A Rule Nominally Independent Power Systems. In Short, It's All About Dominance.