Coucher de soleil

“Assyria soon discovered a painful truth: empires are like Ponzi schemes: financial frauds in which previous investors are paid returns out of new investors' deposits. The costs of holding imperial territory can only be underwritten by loot and tribute extracted by constant new conquests; empires must continue to expand if they are not to collapse.”
― Paul Kriwaczek, Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization

“I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life.”
― Meriwether Lewis

“What I am
is tired of jam.”
― Russell Hoban

“You see things; you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?”
― George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah