My goal is to goad people into saying something that ruins their life.
A man is a god in ruins.
The prudent person may direct a state, but it is the enthusiast who regenerates or ruins it.
There's always Tunisia. Amid the smoking ruins of the Middle East, there is that one encouraging success story.
Brazil is strewn with ruins of projects - refineries, power plants - begun but never finished. Most of this investment never landed in places or industries that really meshed with the trajectory of the global economy. This wasn't state-of-the art industrial policy. The projects seemed curiously nostalgic.
The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
Digital intimacy ruins the appetite for the real thing. So, when kids are gaming or even when spouses are gaming, they lose their appetite for genuine intimacy. Kids lose their appetite for getting their intimacy needs, their hunger for significance and attachment, with the family, and it erodes the relationship between them and their parents.
Even when the characters are supposed to be accustomed to the wonder, I try to weave an air of awe and impressiveness corresponding to what the reader should feel. A casual style ruins any serious fantasy.
We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.
