The Trouble With Being A Duke Quotes

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Anthony turned to look at her. It was difficult for him to discern her expression with the mask she was wearing, but he could see her eyes, and there was something so honest, yet desperate, hidden there that he found it impossible to look away. She was mesmerizing, and whatever reason she had for being there, he knew that it was vitally important to her, that attending the ball was not without risk. ~ Sophie Barnes

Poor dog! I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words. ~ George Eliot

The trouble with being quoted a lot is that it makes other people think you're quoting yourself when in fact you're merely repeating yourself. ~ Larry Wall

Sometimes it amazed him. Lanky Thom with his white hair and mustaches, who had been a Queen's lover once, and more willingly than himself, not to mention more than a lover, if you believed half he said. Square-jawed Harnan with that tattoo on his cheek and more elsewhere, who had been a soldier all his life. Juilin with his bamboo staff and his sword-breaker on his hip, who thought himself as good as any lord even if the idea of carrying a sword himself still made him uneasy, and fat Vanin, who made Juilin look a bootlicker by comparison. Skinny Fergin, and Gorderan, nearly as wide in the shoulders as Perrin, and Metwyn, whose pale Cairhienin face still looked like a boy's despite being years older than Mat. Some of them followed Mat Cauthon because they thought he was lucky, because his luck might keep them alive when the swords were out, and some for reasons he was not really sure of, but they followed. Not even Thom had ever more than protested an order of his. Maybe Renaile had been more than luck. Maybe his being ta'veren did more than dump him in the-middle of trouble. Suddenly he felt... responsible... for these men. It was an uncomfortable feeling. Mat Cauthon and responsibility did not go together. It was unnatural. ~ Robert Jordan

I grow tired of your mouth." Bones shifted under Curran's skin. The nose widened, the jaws grew, the top lip split, displaying enormous teeth. I was staring into the face of a nightmare, a horrible meld of human and lion. If a thing that weighed over six hundred pounds in beast-form could be called a lion. His eyes never changed. The rest of him - the body, the arms, the legs, even his hair and skin remained human. The shapeshifters had three forms: beast, human, and half. They could shift into any of the three, but they always changed shape completely. Most had to strain to maintain the half-form and to be able to speak in it was a great achievement. Only Curran could do this: turn part of his body into one shape while keeping the rest in another.
Normally, I had no trouble with Curran's face in half-form. It was well-proportioned, even - many shapeshifters suffered the "my jaws are way too big and don't fit together" syndrome - but I was used to that half-form face being sheathed in gray fur. Having human skin stretched over it was nausea inducing.
He noticed my heroic efforts not to barf. "What is it now?"
I waved my hand around my face. "Fur."
"What do you mean?"
"Your face has no fur."
Curran touched his chin. And just like that all traces of the beast vanished. He sat before me fully human.
He massaged his jaw.
The beast grew stronger during the flare. Curran's irritation caused his control to slip just a hair.
"Having techn ~ Ilona Andrews

Stigma takes many forms, comes from all directions, is sometimes blatantly overt, but can also be remarkably subtle. It is the cruel comment, the unkind smirk, the extrusion from the group, the lost job opportunity, the rejected marriage proposal, the ineligibility for life insurance, the inability to adopt a child or pilot a plane.

But it is also the reduced expectation, the helping hand when none is needed or wanted, the solicitous sympathy that one cannot really be expected to measure up.

And the secondary psychological and practical harms of having a mental disorder come only partly from how others see you. A great deal of the trouble comes from the change in how you see yourself: the sense of being damaged goods, feeling not normal or worthy, not a full fledged member of the group.

It is bad enough that stigma is so often associated with having a mental disorder, but the stigma that comes from being mislabeled with a fake diagnosis is a dead loss with absolutely no redeeming features. ~ Allen Frances

(She) says that she's finding it especially hard to take when these earnest ravaged folks at the lectern say they're `Here But For the Grace of God,' except that's not the strange thing she says, because when Gately nods hard and starts to interject about `It was the same for--' and wants to launch into a fairly standard Boston AA agnostic-soothing riff about the `God' in the slogan being just shorthand for a totally subjective and up-to-you `Higher Power' and AA being merely spiritual instead of dogmatically religious, a sort of benign anarchy of subjective spirit, Joelle cuts off his interjection and says that but that her trouble with it is that `But For the Grace of God' is a subjunctive, a counterfactual, she says, and can make sense only when introducing a conditional clause, like e.g. `But For the Grace of God I would have died on Molly Notkin's bathroom floor,' so that an indicative transposition like `I'm here But For the Grace of God' is, she says, literally senseless, and regardless of whether she hears it or not it's meaningless, and that the foamy enthusiasm with which these folks can say what in fact means nothing at all makes her want to put her head in a Radarange at the thought that Substances have brought her to the sort of pass where this is the sort of language she has to have Blind Faith in. ~ David Foster Wallace

To Lillian's surprise, she had been seated near the head of Lord Westcliff's table, only three places away from his right hand. Occupying a place so close to the host was a mark of high favor, very seldom given to an unmarried girl with no rank. Wondering if the footman had make a mistake in seating her there, she glanced cautiously at the faces of those guests nearest her, and saw that they too were puzzled by her presence. Even the countess, who was being seated at the very end of the table, stared at her with a frown.
Lillian gave Lord Westcliff a questioning glance as he took his place at the head of the table. One of his dark brows arched. "Is something amiss? You seem a bit perturbed, Miss Bowman."
The correct response would probably have been to blush and thank him for the unexpected honor. But as Lillian stared at his face, which was softened by the influence of candleglow, she found herself answering with brazen frankness. "I am wondering why I am sitting near the head of the table. In light of what happened this morning, I assumed you would have me seated all the way out on the back terrace."
There was a moment of utter silence as the guests around them registered shock that Lillian would so openly refer to the conflict between them. However, Westcliff astonished them all by laughing quietly, his gaze locked with hers. After a moment, the others joined in with forced chuckles.
"Knowing of your penchant for trouble, Miss Bowman, I have conclud ~ Lisa Kleypas

If you're reading this book, you're probably already interested in being green, and almost certainly already a parent (or about to become one), so I won't trouble too much with the semantics of what 'being green' means, but just say that doing the 'green' thing here means being as environmentally friendly as possible, while considering your child's everyday personal health as well, and taking into account social-justice issues to some degree, because no-one is an island and humans and animals are part of the environment too. Even if you're new to this, it's entirely
possible, with a little helping hand, to form new, green lifestyle habits, so long as you're prepared to take baby steps to begin with (and pardon the pun). ~ Zion Lights

And Ken said I can't marry you."
Jack felt his heart jump in his chest. He glanced at his sleeping brother. "Did he say why?"
"Yes." She kept her voice sober. "He said you have to ask me properly."
Relief made him weak. His pulse beat at his temples, throbbed in his neck. For one moment his fingers closed in her hair in a tight fist. "Properly? If I ask, you might say no, so I'm thinking we'll just start off right and I'll tell you and we'll get the thing done."
"Get the thing done?" Briony echoed.
Ken snorted aloud. "Jack, I'll take over watch and you get some sleep. I think you fried your brain up there on the roof."
"Pipe down over there." Jack said. "You're already stirring up trouble."
"Get the thing done?" Briony repeated slowly. "The thing being what exactly?"
"The ceremony. The paperwork. Whatever the hell it takes to make it legal."
Briony sat up and glared at him. "Take your 'it' and shove it, Jack."
"There's no need ti be getting upset, Briony. We can't exactly go around with a bunch of kids and not do whatever the hell it is one does to make it legal."
"Whatever the hell it takes to make what legal?"
He shrugged. "How the hell would I know? I've never done this before. Sleeping together I guess."
"So you are going to marry me so it's legal to sleep with me?"
"This isn't coming out right."
"You think?"
"Don't get upset, baby,. I don't understand why you're getting upset. ~ Christine Feehan

The trouble with being educated is that it takes a long time; it uses up the better part of your life and when you are finished what you know is that you would have benefited more by going into banking. ~ Philip K. Dick

am in so much trouble! I'm ruined! I'm just a human being - fallible and stammering. My lips are encrusted with filth; and I live among people just like me. But here I am, and I've seen with my very own eyes none other than the King, the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies. ~ Anonymous

The book also says that coping with difficult times is like being in a conical shell-shaped spiral and there is a point at each turn that is very painful and difficult. That is your particular problem or sore spot. When you are at the narrow, pointy end of the spiral you come back to that situation very often as the rotations are quite small. As you go round, you will go through the troubled time less and less frequently but still you must come back to it, so you shouldn't feel when it happens that you are back to square one. Trouble ~ Helen Fielding

When you're dealing with these forces or powers in a philosophic and scientific way, contemplating them from an armchair, that rationalistic approach is useful. It is quite profitable then to regard the gods and goddesses and demons as projections of the human mind or as unconscious aspects of ourselves. But every truth is a truth only for one place and one time, and that's a truth, as I said, for the armchair. When you're actually dealing with these figures, the only safe, pragmatic and operational approach is to treat them as having a being, a will, and a purpose entirely apart from the humans who evoke them. If the Sorcerer's Apprentice had understood that, he wouldn't have gotten into so much trouble. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

We had planned to spend Christmas morning with my family, and then head over to Phil and Kay's for Christmas night. The whole family was there, including all the grandkids. Bella, Willie and Korie's daughter, was the youngest and still an infant. We opened presents, ate dinner, and the whole evening felt surreal. Tomorrow morning I'll have a baby in this world, I thought. When Jep and I left that night, I said, "I'm gonna go have a baby. See you all later!"
For all the worry and concern and tears and prayers we'd spent on our unborn baby, when it came to her birth, she was no trouble at all. I went to the hospital, got prepped for the C-section, and within thirty minutes she was out. Lily was beautiful and healthy. I was overwhelmed with happiness and joy. I felt God had blessed me. He'd created life inside of me--a real, beautiful, breathing little human being--and brought her into this world through me. It was an unbelievable miracle. And the best part? Jep was in the delivery room. Unlike his dad, he wanted to be there, and he shared it all with me.
I'll never forget the sight of Jep decked out in blue scrubs, with the blue head cover, holding his baby girl for the first time. I'll never forget how she nestled down in the crook of his arm, his hand wrapped up and around, gently holding her. He stared down at her, and I could see a smile behind his white surgical mask. He was already in love--I knew that look.
After we admired the baby together, I fell aslee ~ Jessica Robertson

Espionage has something of the quality of a dream. In the spy's world, as in dreams, the terrain is always uncertain. You put your foot on what looks like solid ground and it gives way under you and you go into a kind of free fall, turning slowly tail over tip and clutching onto things that are themselves falling. This instability, this myriad-ness, that the world takes on, is both the attraction and terror of being a spy. Attraction, because in the midst of such uncertainty you are never required to be yourself; whatever you do, there is another, alternative you standing invisibly to one side, observing, evaluating, remembering…. This is the secret power of the spy… it is the power to be and not be, to detach oneself from oneself, to be oneself and at the same time another. The trouble is, if I were always at least two versions of myself, so all others must be similarly twinned with themselves in this awful, slippery way. ~ John Banville

The trouble with being too careful about your wishes, though, was that you could end up with a wish so shapeless that it could come true and you wouldn't even know it, or it wouldn't matter. ~ Lynne Rae Perkins

She was not happy
she never had been. Whence came this insufficiency in life
this instantaneous turning to decay of everything on which she leaned? But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in an angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! How impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight. ~ Gustave Flaubert

People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh?
And of course there clearly had to be, said Koomi, a Supreme Being. But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn't in fact made it. If he had made it he would, being Supreme, have made a better job of it, with far better thought given, taking an example at random, to things like the design of the common nostril. Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere. This suggested that the Universe had probably been put together in a bit of a rush by an underling while the Supreme Being wasn't looking, in the same way that Boy Scouts' Association minutes are done on office photocopiers all over the country.
So, reasoned Koomi, it was not a good idea to address any prayers to a Supreme Being. It would only attract his attention and might cause trouble. ~ Terry Pratchett

If they learn easily, they are penalized for being bored when they have nothing to do; if they excel in some outstanding way, they are penalized as being conspicuously better than the peer group. The culture tries to make the child with a gift into a one-sided person, to penalize him at every turn, to cause him trouble in making friends and to create conditions conducive to the development of a neurosis. Neither teachers, the parents of other children, nor the child peers will tolerate a Wunderkind. ~ Margaret Mead

Though he may have been more tolerant than most of his brethren, being addressed without deference by a woman of no particular lineage was more than the priest could bear. A tic sprang to life in his right eye. Glaring, he turned away from me and addressed himself pointedly to Casare.
"Signore, we are about to perform the final sacraments for our late Holy Father! Surely you can understand that your presence here and that of your-" He paused, no doubt condsiering what he would like to call me. Some sense of self-preservation must have won out as he said only, "-companion is not appropriate?"
Cesare had many skills- I have alluded to several of them - but he was utterly lacking in even the rudiments of tact. Indeed, his notion of diplomacy revolved around the conviction that the best route to peace lies in the grinding of one's enemies into the ground so thoroughly that the very fact of their ever having existed will be forgotten upon the wind.
But he was in Saint Peter's Basilica, next to Jerusalem the holiest place in all Christendom. And if he caused any real problems, he would have no end of trouble from his father.
Accordingly, Cesare gritted his teeth and said, "Don't fuck with me, priest. Just show us how to get into the garret. ~ Sara Poole

I miss my room. I miss my bed. I miss being a little punk with no care in the world, giving two fucks about it, just looking for trouble. I guess I found it. ~ Andrea Portes

The phone went off. Private caller.
"Thank fuck," he said as he accepted it. "Payne - "
"No."
Manny closed his eyes: Her brother sounded like hell.
"Where is she."
"We don't know. And there's nothing that we can do from here - we're trapped inside."
The guy exhaled like he was smoking something.
"What the fuck happened before she left? I thought she'd be spending all night with you. It's cool if you two . . . you know . . . but why did she leave so early?"
"I told her it wasn't going to work out."
Long silence. "What the fuck are you thinking?"
Clearly if it hadn't been all bright and sunny outside, motherfucker would have been knocking on Manny's door, looking to kick some Italian ass.
"I thought that would make you happy."
"Oh, yeah. Abso - break my sister's fucking heart. I'm all for that."
Another sharp exhale, like he was blowing smoke.
"She's in love with you, asshole."
Didn't that stop him in his tracks. But he got back with the program.
"Listen, she and I . . ."
At that point, he was supposed to explain the stuff about the results of his physical and how he was all freaked out and didn't know what the repercussions were. But the trouble was, in the hours since Payne had taken off, he'd come to realize that however true that shit was, there was a more fundamental thing going on at the core of him:
He was being a little bitch.
What the go-away had really bee ~ J.R. Ward

I've had a fountain pen surgically implanted in my left index finger to save trouble. My body is tattooed with line upon line of truth, fiction, and a not-always-pleasing mix of the two. ~ Chila Woychik

Now, if two men have to walk along together for two or three hours at a time, even if they feel a really strong desire to communicate, they will inevitably, sooner or later, fall into awkward silences and possibly end up loathing each other. One of these men might be unable to resist the temptation to hurl his companion down a steep riverbank. People are quite right when they say that three is god's number, the number of peace and concord. When there are three in a group, one of the three can remain silent for a few minutes without that silence being noticed. Trouble could arise, however, if one of the three men has been walking along plotting how best to get rid of his neighbor in order to make off with his share of the provisions, and then invites the third man in the group to collaborate in this reprehensible scheme, only to be met with the regretful answer, I can't, I'm afraid, I've already agreed to help him kill you. ~ Jose Saramago

In the pits of our souls - if I amuse myself with the notion that I have a soul - Elian and I aren't so different. Two kingdoms that come with responsibilities we each have trouble bearing. Him, the shackles of being pinned to one land and one life. Me, trapped in the confines of my mother's murderous legacy. And the ocean, calling out to us both. A song of freedom and longing. ~ Alexandra Christo

Vampires do breathe, by the way, but their chests don't move like humans'. Have you ever lain in the arms of your sweetheart and tried to match your breathing to his, or hers? You do it automatically. Your brain only gets involved if your body is having trouble. Fortunately there was nothing about this situation that was like being in the arms of a sweetheart except that I was leaning against someone's naked chest. I could no more have breathed with him than I could have ignited gasoline and shot exhaust out my butt because I was sitting in the passenger seat of a car. ~ Robin McKinley

Startled, he tried to comfort him. But Father said slowly, "I ask myself whether I am afraid of death. I don't think I am. My life as it is now is worse. And it looks as if there is not going to be any ending. Sometimes I feel weak: I stand by Tranquillity River and think, Just one leap and I can get it over with. Then I tell myself I must not. If I die without being cleared, there will be no end of trouble for all of you… I have been thinking a lot lately. I had a hard childhood, and society was full of injustice. It was for a fair society that I joined the Communists. I've tried my best through the years. But what good has it done for the people? As for myself, why is it that in the end I have come to be the ruin of my family? People who believe in retribution say that to end badly you must have something on your conscience. I have been thinking hard about the things I've done in my life. I have given orders to execute some people…"

Father went on to tell Jin-ming about the death sentences he had signed, the names and stories of the e-ba ('ferocious despots') in the land reform in Chaoyang, and the bandit chiefs in Yibin.

"But these people had done so much evil that God himself would have had them killed.

What, then, have I done wrong to deserve all this?"

After a long pause, Father said, "If I die like this, don't believe in the Communist Party anymore. ~ Jung Chang

Martha would come over every week and check on Mia and work with her on relaxation and breathing exercises to prepare for the natural labor. Jenny was on board with the natural thing too, so of course she and Mia dragged Tyler and me to the Bradley Birthing Method classes.

It was hysterical; we had to get in all kinds of weird poses with the girls while they mimicked being in labor. We would massage their backs while they were perched on all fours, moaning. One of the hardest things I've ever done is contain my laughter during those classes. Mia was the freakin' teacher's pet because she was taking it so seriously.

Right around the third class, they showed us a video of a live birth. I had nightmares for a week after that. Tyler and I agreed that we had to find a way to get out of going to the classes.

We hadn't mutually agreed on a plan, so during the fifth class, Tyler took it upon himself and used his own bodily gifts to get us into a heap of trouble. Tyler is lactose intolerant, and he has to take these little white tablets every time he eats cheese. The morning of the class, he stopped by the studio with a half-eaten pizza. I didn't even think twice about it until that night in class during our visualization exercises when this god-awful, horrendous odor overtook our senses.

At first everyone kept quiet and just looked around for the source. There wasn't a sound to accompany the lethal attack, so everyone went into investigatio ~ Renee Carlino

And whether or not the educators who are trying to raise up America's students can actually set and meet higher academic standards, our cultural values make their job next to impossible. It's so much easier for pundits and politicians to point out figures and blame the people who are in the trenches every day than it is to get in there with them, or even to find out what actually goes on in those trenches. It's so much easier for parents to blame teachers when their kids get in trouble than to do the heavy lifting required at home to keep kids on track. And it's so much easier for us as a nation to cross our fingers and hope that we'll "get lucky" with the innovative "solutions" being tested on America's schools today than it is for us to roll up our sleeves and invest our own time, talent, and money in the schools that are even now
with or without us
shaping our nation's future. ~ Tony Danza

Man overboard!" Then everyone was busy. Some of the sailors hurried aloft to take in the sail; others hurried below to get to the oars; and Rhince, who was on duty on the poop, began to put the helm hard over so as to come round and back to the man who had gone overboard. But by now everyone knew that it wasn't strictly a man. It was Reepicheep.
"Drat that mouse!" said Drinian. "It's more trouble than all the rest of the ship's company put together. If there is any scrape to be got into, in it will get! It ought to be put in irons--keelhauled--marooned--have its whiskers cut off. Can anyone see the little blighter?"
All this didn't mean that Drinian really disliked Reepicheep. On the contrary he liked him very much and was therefore frightened about him, and being frightened put him in a bad temper--just as your mother is much angrier with you for running out into the road in front of a car than a stranger would be. No one, of course, was afraid of Reepicheep's drowning, for he was an excellent swimmer; but the three who knew what was going on below the water were afraid of those long, cruel spears in the hands of the Sea People.
In a few minutes the Dawn Treader had come round and everyone could see the black blob in the water which was Reepicheep. He was chattering with the greatest excitement but as his mouth kept on getting filled with water nobody could understand what he was saying.
"He'll blurt the whole thing out if we don't shut him up," cried Dri ~ C.S. Lewis

For many years I have been asking myself why intelligent children act unintelligently at school. The simple answer is, "Because they're scared." I used to suspect that children's defeatism had something to do with their bad work in school, but I thought I could clear it away with hearty cries of "Onward! You can do it!" What I now see for the first time is the mechanism by which fear destroys intelligence, the way it affects a child's whole way of looking at, thinking about, and dealing with life. So we have two problems, not one: to stop children from being afraid, and then to break them of the bad thinking habits into which their fears have driven them.

What is most surprising of all is how much fear there is in school. Why is so little said about it. Perhaps most people do not recognize fear in children when they see it. They can read the grossest signs of fear; they know what the trouble is when a child clings howling to his mother; but the subtler signs of fear escaping them. It is these signs, in children's faces, voices, and gestures, in their movements and ways of working, that tell me plainly that most children in school are scared most of the time, many of them very scared. Like good soldiers, they control their fears, live with them, and adjust themselves to them. But the trouble is, and here is a vital difference between school and war, that the adjustments children make to their fears are almost wholly bad, destructive of their intelligence and capacit ~ John Holt

The most vital weapons at the disposal of a special forces soldier are his intellect and his mental toughness. Sometimes it all comes down to 'who wants it most', i.e. whoever is more willing to keep fighting and trying to survive. Being able to keep your head and look for advantages or escape routes is a big plus too.
Getting into 'survival mode' requires shifting mental gears when you need to. Good training helps with this as well as giving you the skills you need, but ultimately the will that drives your bid to survive is yours.
If you give in to fear or go into denial, pretending that it is not happening, then you will fail. Instead you must accept that it IS really happening and deal with it. So if you find yourself thinking, "What's he going to do to me?', you have to force yourself to answer, 'Nothing. I'm not going to let him.'
If you have done all you can to avoid trouble and it finds you anyway, then it is down to you to make a way out of the situation with as little harm to yourself as possible. Yes, you will be scared. Yes, you might indeed get hurt. Yes, it is possible that you could fail to defend yourself... but not for lack of trying. If the bad guy will not let you withdraw or de-escalate the situation, if he insists on fighting then he has decided that someone is going to get hurt. But it is you, not him, that gets to decide who. ~ Martin J. Dougherty

If Edgar sounded overeager, even rushed, the race was with his own temperament. He placed a premium on savvy. Yet since you could only obtain new information by admitting you didn't know it already, savvy required an apprenticeship as a naive twit. You had to ask crude, obvious questions ... you had to sit still while worldly-wise warhorses ... fired withering glances as if you were born yesterday.
Well, Edgar was born yesterday for the moment, although his tolerance for being treated liked a simpleton was in short supply. He'd needed to rattle off a multitude of stupid questions before he embraced his next incarnation as an insider. The trouble was that savvy coated your brain in plastic like a driver's license: nothing more could get in. Hence the point at which you decided you knew everything was exactly the point at which you became an ignorant dipshit. ~ Lionel Shriver

Mennonites formed themselves in Holland five hundred years ago after a man named Menno Simons became so moved by hearing Anabaptist prisoners singing hymns before being executed by the Spanish Inquisition that he joined their cause and became their leader. Then they started to move all around the world in colonies looking for freedom and isolation and peace and opportunities to sell cheese. Different countries give us shelter if we agree to stay out of trouble and help with the economy by farming in obscurity. We live like ghosts. Then, sometimes, those countries decide they want us to be real citizens after all and start to force us to do things like join the army or pay taxes or respect laws and then we pack our stuff up in the middle of the night and move to another country where we can live purely but somewhat out of context. ~ Miriam Toews

You happened to find the Tezumen one day and decided, I think I recall your words correctly, that they were 'a bunch of Stone-Age no-hopers sitting around in a swamp being no trouble to anyone', am I right? Whereupon you entered the mind of one of their high priests - I believe at that time they worshipped a small stick - drove him insane and inspired the tribes to unite, terrorise their neighbours and bring forth upon the continent a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men should be taken to the top of ceremonial pyramids and be chopped up with stone knives." The King pulled his notes towards him. "Oh yes, some of them were also to be flayed alive," he added. Quezovercoatl ~ Terry Pratchett

Are you going to change yet again, shift your position according to the questions that are put to you, and say that the objections are not really directed at the place from which you are speaking? Are you going to declare yet again that you have never been what you have been reproached with being? Are you already preparing the way out that will enable you in your next book to spring up somewhere else and declare as you're now doing: no, no, I'm not where you are lying in wait for me, but over here, laughing at you?'
'What, do you imagine that I would take so much trouble and so much pleasure in writing, do you think that I would keep so persistently to my task, if I were not preparing – with a rather shaky hand – a labyrinth into which I can venture, into which I can move my discourse... in which I can lose myself and appear at last to eyes that I will never have to meet again. I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write. ~ Michel Foucault