Oh, yes. Every year in this Land of the Gods we have earth tremors. And fires and flood and Great Waves, and the monster storms – the tai-funs. Nature is very strong with us.’ Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. ‘Perhaps that is why we love life so much, Anjin-san. You see, we have to. Death is part of our air and sea and earth. You should know, Anjin-san, in this Land of Tears, death is our heritage.
The British. We have proved beyond all doubt we’re to be trusted, we can govern, and, by and large, our bureaucracy’s incorruptible.
I really don’t understand them, the capitalists. They delude themselves. We’re openly committed to consume them but they give us the means to do it.
Why should we fight them when their own greed and stupidity’s destroying them. Eh?
Perhaps that is why we love life so much, Anjin-san. You see, we have to. Death is part of our air and see and earth.
Israel was a Stalin-Beria coup of monumental proportions! Who helped it, overt and covert, come into being? Who gave it immediate recognition? We did, and why?” Suslev belched again, “To cement into the guts of Arabia a perpetual cancer that will suppurate and destroy both sides and, along with them, bring down the industrial might of the West. Jew against Mohammedan against Christian.
Secrets never leave you in peace, however much you wish or pray.
Those fanatics’ll never live at peace with one another even though they could, easily. They will never bury their differences even if it costs them their stupid lives.” He laughed.
Only a real man has the right to stand at the pinnacle.
Fallibility in a leader is very trying. Isn’t it? They spill so much of other people’s blood.
We in the KGB are like Japanese in that we too agree the only sin is failure.
There can only be one Tai-Pan.
Without terror how can the few rule the many?
Wildcat strikes are the way of the future. With wildcats we can get around union hierarchies without disrupting existing unionism. Our unions’re fragmented. Deliberately. Fifty men can be a separate union and that union can dominate thousands – and so long as there’s never a secret ballot, the few will always rule the many!
Malayan. It means ‘ashamed.’” He smiled to himself. It was a contraction of puki mahlu. Mahlu ashamed, puki a Golden Gulley. Malays grant feelings to that part of a woman: hunger, sadness, kindness, rapaciousness, hesitancy, shame, anger – anything and everything.
Changi changed everyone, changed values permanently. For instance, it gave you a dullness about death – we saw too much of it to have the same sort of meaning to outsiders, to normal people. We’re a generation of dinosaurs, we the few who survived. I suppose anyone who goes to war, any war, sees life with different eyes if they end up in one piece.
A lot of bull that’s worshipped as the be-all and end-all of existence. So much of ‘normal, civilized’ life is bull that you can’t imagine it. For us ex-Changi-ites – we’re lucky, we’re cleansed, we know what life is really all about. What frightens you, doesn’t frighten me, what frightens me, you’d laugh at.
Like every serious student, follow the most important law for all students: repay your teacher by making it your duty to surpass him!
He had long since discovered that peaceful sleep could provide the answer to most puzzles, and if not, what did it really matter? Wasn’t life just a dewdrop within a dewdrop?
How could such a pretty girl become known as the Hag, she wondered. It must be hateful to become old in face and body when you’re young at heart and still strong and tough – so unfair for a woman.