I have too much free time. Free time makes people think; thinking makes people morbidly self-absorbed; and unless you are watertight and flawless, ex… - Steve Toltz

Anyone with an overactive imagination, in particular a perversely negative one, need never be surprised by anything. The imagination absolutely can catch out imminent disasters as they're warming up, especially if you keep your nostrils open. People who can accurately read the future: are they gifted at seeing or gifted at guessing?

Confronting your own assassin is a tricky business; you don't want to trigger your own murder just for the sake of getting something off your chest.

I'm telling you, the whole of Australia went crazy. The national obsession became reform. I even think they understood that it wasn't the ideas themselves but the idea of the ideas, the idea that we might as well restlessly innovate and wherever possible obliterate our slavish connection with the past. Why? Because the past is always the worst thing happening to the present at any given time.