Status Updates From The Weight of Glory

“We are cross-fodder.”

“Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire [to be in the Inner Ring] is going to be one of the chief motives of your life…Any other kind of life…will be the result of conscious and continuous effort. If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an ‘inner ringer,’” or suffer from the (self-inflicted) anguish of exclusion.