If sleep sought him, it was spectacularly unsuccessful. - Sean Russell

"We continue to negotiate the treaty, endlessly apparently, to everyone's continuing loss." He smiled wryly. "You know how such things go. We no longer debate to gain real advantage but to come away from the table having created the perception that we have somehow won. 'Politics,' this is called."

Experience taught him that the future was uncertain and one could prepare for it only by learning indifference to disappointment and loss.

Men who were used to subordinating others to their wills were invariably surprised by rebellion—as though this imaginary prison they created was, in fact, real.