the oppressive government of the rich. - James A. Michener

"I decided (after listening to a "talk radio" commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was both a humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perpetual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind — a secular humanist — I accept the accusation. [Interview, Parade magazine, 24 November 1991]"

Where is Winesooth?” she had asked Wiktor, and he had said rather sharply: “On the map, where else?” “But where on the map? Clearly, it’s not on mine.” “It’s got to be,” he snapped, grabbing the map from her, then jabbing at it with his finger. “Right there, where it should be.” “But that says Lancut,” she protested, and when Wiktor looked again at the map he repeated: “It’s right here, where I said.

Detritus, that's the word. The awful accumulation of wrong decisions, improper terms. You scrape away the excrescences of history...and maybe you get down to the bedrock of human society, where diamonds hide. God of my fathers, how I wish we could bring in the psychological drills and probe down to bedrock.