Words don't just point to things but are saturated with feelings, which can endow the words with a sense of magic, taboo, and sin.

“In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said. “Absolutely, precisely,” Mr. Greenspan replied.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment.

Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.

The relentless promulgation of crude reactionary lunacy ...

Sometimes, of course, a mess is just a mess. Not every entropy increase is accompanied by the formation of an ordered structure.

On second thought -- do I want more structure?

The difficulty in distinguishing the delusional and the venal from the dishonest and fraudulent is why prosecutors would be hard-pressed to indict half the investment bankers on Wall Street.

It's a story of innovators prevailing again and again over skeptics who prefer to preserve the status quo.

A fallen raja, a half-Chinese convict, a plucky American sailor, a widowed opium farmer, a transgendered religious visionary are all united by the “smoky paradise” of the opium seed. It's a sumptuous, angsty, teeming, myth-infused, gaudy, exuberant, many-hued and restless world ... It was basically Summer camp for indie nerds.