Ghosts? Pah. We are the most substantial things in the world, the foundations of the present. We are memories. - Ian McDonald

How proud he would have felt [...] to have seen those seeds germinate into a Muslim nation, a Land of the Pure. How it would have broken his heart to see that Land of the Pure become a medieval theocracy and then rip itself apart in tribal factionalism. The Word of God prophecies from the barrel of an AK47.

The closer they come to the object of desire the more reluctant they are to grasp it. The search is the thing. The process is the purpose. The final mystery can only be anticlimactic. The story is ended.

Legends should stay legends; otherwise they just become history, when the natural course of things is the other way around, from history to legend.