James

“He says it was tourists being careless, where I see a fiendishly clever murder attempt.”
“Mr. McCarthy, you’d better explain.”
“Patrick, please. You’ll be tempted to laugh. It was a banana skin.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“In fact, one of the main lessons to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, and those other past societies (as well as from the recent collapse of the Soviet Union) is that a society's steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers, wealth, and power. In that respect, the trajectories of the societies that we have discussed are unlike the usual courses of individual human lives, which decline in a prolonged senescence. The reason is simple: maximum population, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production mean maximum environmental impact, approaching the limit where impact outstrips resources. On reflection, it's no surprise that declines of societies tend to follow swiftly on their peaks.”
― Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

“Aurelia was just about to take a sip of a mimosa when Mother Guardian snatched the flute away and promptly downed the drink in one gulp. Burping unashamedly, she said, "We can't have the validity of the marriage contracts jeopardized because the bride got rat-assed on her wedding day.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“This book is dedicated to those in life whom I have met and by virtue of those encounters, have helped to shape the content herein.”
― A.R. Merrydew, From The Pen Of An Aquarian: Love, hope and darker moments