Alex Yule

“Bickering primates, the lot of them. Progress is what matters. Fulfilling the potential of humanity, and of all other life.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time

“They were their own little state with thirteen citizens, cut off from human progress, marooned on a desert island in a sea the size of the universe.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Ruin

“As the sun dipped below Twin Peaks, Jones wandered toward Castro and Market and saw the huge crowd starting to gather. “It was the most amazingly beautiful, heart-wrenchingly sad, magnificent example of what San Francisco is. It was gay people, straight people, white people, Filipinos, Chinese, African Americans, men and women of all ages, children, the poor and well dressed, people in fur coats next to people in rags. We estimated there were between thirty thousand and forty thousand people. We marched in almost total silence down Market Street to city hall and filled Civic Center Plaza, a sea of people holding candles. I remember standing there and thinking, ‘This isn’t the end of anything. This is the beginning.’ And I was right. “I think every city has a soul, every city is unique and special. But for San Franciscans, I don’t think there could ever be another place to call home. And a lot of it has to do with what I saw that night: with this ability to suffer horrible and dreadful events, earthquakes, civil turmoil, assassinations, and to not only endure but to create something beautiful from it.”
― David Talbot, Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love

“Scholarly translations of the Tao Te Ching as a manual for rulers use a vocabulary that emphasizes the uniqueness of the Taoist “sage,” his masculinity, his authority. This language is perpetuated, and degraded, in most popular versions. I wanted a Book of the Way accessible to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening for a voice that speaks to the soul.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way