Nick Drake

My dear friend, the world is really one vast marketplace. No one cares where a man is from as long as he has gold in his pocket, or something you want. And the remarkable thing is this: the wars have only encouraged demand, trade has actually boomed in these difficult years. The ships are full, everyone is happy. War and politics are irrelevant, unless the great flow of trade is disturbed.

In these dark times people prefer to look away from everything they would rather not see.

‘Perhaps our childhoods are buried inside all of us. Perhaps they set the pattern for our futures,’ I suggested.
‘In that case I am doomed by mine,’ she said without self-pity.
‘Perhaps not, for you are aware of it,’ I said.

'Come on, Rahotep. How do you think Royal Envoy Nakht gets his information about events in the north, and in the war? The army has its intelligence, and the palace has its own, too. The days when an invasion or an attack took place and no one heard about it for months are long gone. This war’s all about speed and information, and you can be sure Nakht has a very efficient system. The problem is, each system is always trying to infiltrate the other. And there’s always the danger of spies.’

Even words are not perhaps safe in these times.

You are like one of your bees, going from flower to flower, sampling the nectar of this and that.

For a world with so much sun we live in a dark place, in a dark time.

Hunger is no respecter of disaster.

The truth is always the truth.

Be careful, Rahotep, I know these writers, they say “borrow” when they mean “steal.” You will soon read your words coming back to you on some privately circulated scroll of new verse.

Death makes us strangers to ourselves ... Do not indulge yourself in a self-pitying, self-gratifying revenge. More than likely you would simply end up dead as well.

Maybe I’ve finally learned the bitter truth that I can’t beat them, even if I’ll never join them. But I’m not going to lose the one thing I can still call my own: my life. And you should wise up and do the same, especially with a new child on the way.

Cruelty, rage, grief — and something others carelessly name evil — can reduce the strange collation of profanity and beauty which makes up each of us to an inanimate lump of decaying meat.

We need strong, educated women to help us build a better world.

Can love communicate over great distance? I could only hope so.