"So the real meaning of this event is that Norton aircraft are so well built that they protected two hundred and seventy passengers from a bad engine. We're actually heros -but Norton stock will fall tomorrow. And some of the public may be afraid to fly on Norton aircraft. Is it an appropriate response to what actually happened? No. But it's an appropriate response to what's being reported."

"Remember: they [journalists] make the rules. And the game's got nothing to do with accuracy, or the facts, or reality. It's just a circus."

"Like many buisness people, they tended to treat academics as if they were slightly retarded, unable to function in the real word, to play the real games. Or perhaps, he thought, they just found it inexplicable that anyone would choose an occupation that wouldn't make them a millionaire by age twenty-four."

"It upsets some people when they first arrive. There's no ambient noise here: no radio or TV, no airplanes, no machinery, no passing cars. In the twentieth century we're so accustomed to hearing sound all the time, the silence feels creepy."

"The present is like a coral island that sticks above the water, but is built upon millions of dead corals under the surface, that no one sees. in the same way, our everday world is built upon millions and millions of events and descisions that occured in the past. And what we add in the present is trivial."

"What is authentic? Anything that is not devised and structured to make a profit. Anything that is not controlled by corporations. Anyhting that exists for it's own sake, that assumes its own shape. But of course nothing in the modern world is allowed to assume its own shape. The modern world is the corporate equivilant of a formal garden, where everything is planted and arranged for effect."