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

The five minutes ticked away on Limaal Mandella’s fob watch and the tension wound tight around Corporation Plaza. Rael Mandella Jr., sweating in his father’s best championship suit, was horrified to realize how few of such brief five-minute periods went to make up a lifetime.

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

It was not socialism or communism or Islamism. It was romanticism. There is no more incandescent passion than love in a time of revolution.