Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies. - Jack Vance

Urban folk, dealing as they do in ideas and abstractions, become conditioned to unreality. Then, wherever the fabric of civilization breaks, these people are as helpless as fish out of water.

“What are the motives which prompt men to new enterprises? First, money, which in a sense comprises, includes, all of the other motives too. But for the sake of clarity, call this first, the desire for money, and end in itself. Second, there’s the will for power. Subdivide that last into, say, the crusading instinct and call it a desire for unlimited sexual opportunity. Power over women. Then third, curiosity, the desire to know. Fourth, the enterprise for its own sake, as a diversion. Like a millionaire’s race horses. Fifth, philanthropy. Any more?”
“Covers it,” said Zaer.

Sir, my life, drab and insipid though it may seem to others, is the only life given me to live.