Quotes & Sayings About A Diamond

I creep like a thief, no doubt the man's swift,
I'm more magnificent than Lee Van Cleef — Diamond D

My music is in young people's lives because it's so much a part of their parents' lives. — Neil Diamond

I have had a number of patients with breast cancer, all of whom had root canals on the tooth related to the breast area on the associated energy meridian. — John Diamond

His blue eyes brightened with a smile. 'I did.' He looked over his shoulder, as if making sure her mom wasn't looking. The he pulled her against him and kissed her. A soft kiss.
'I got you something,' He whispered, his lips breathing words against hers.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a ring. A gold ring with a large diamond. A beautiful, teardrop-shaped diamond that looked like an engagement ring. Kylie's breath caught.
'It was my grandmother's ring. In her letter she wrote you should have it. And before you start panicking, let me say that I know maybe we're too young to call it an engagement, That's why I got you this too.' He pulled out a gold chain 'I want you to wear it around your neck. Call it a promise- A promise that when you do slip a ring on that finger ... ' He ran his hand down to her left hand. 'That it'll be my ring.'
Emotion rose in her chest 'You don't have to give me anything for me to give you that promise. — C.C. Hunter

None of my actions have ever sort of been motored by the search for a husband or wondering if I was going to have a family someday or wanting to live in a really great house or thinking it would be really great to have a diamond. — Lena Dunham

I have a lot of confidence, but little Self-Esteem. This has given me a tremendous creative spark because it forced me to keep proving myself. — Neil Diamond

See yourself as a pioneer in a new world. We are not facing the end of the world, as some would have us believe, but the greatest adventure of our lives. We have the unique opportunity to write a new chapter in the history of humankind, to be active participants in shaping a new world. — Jed Diamond

I don't like American football. I think it's boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It's played on a diamond. — Jim Jarmusch

Ah ... romance to me is spontaneity. It's not diamond earrings; it's a bunch of daffodils that's freshly picked from the field. — Kate Winslet

Sorry dude, but we're in a boxing match and you went against your word and tried to make me look weak and stupid in front of 17 million people. That's just not gonna happen. — Dustin Diamond

The only thing for which we can combine is the underlying ideal of Socialism; justice and liberty. But it is hardly strong enough to call this ideal underlying. It is almost completely forgotten. It has been buried beneath layer after layer of doctnaire priggishness, party squabbles and half-backed progressivism until it is like a diamond hidden under a monition of dung. The job of the Socialist is to get it out again. Justice and liberty! Those are the words that have got to ring like a bugle across the world. — George Orwell

We followed him through the wealthy splendor of the house. Hardwood floors. Custom carved woodworking. Statues. Fountains. Suits of armor. Original painting, one of them a van Gogh. Stained-glass windows. Household staff in formal uniform. I kept expecting to come across a flock of peacocks roaming the halls, or maybe a pet cheetah in a diamond-studded collar. — Jim Butcher

It is no more easy to make a good picture than it is to find a diamond or a pearl. It means trouble and you risk your life for it. — Vincent Van Gogh

The evil done by oneself, self-begotten, self-bred, crushes the foolish, as a diamond breaks a precious stone. — Max Muller

They say I am a brave girl
I'm a hailstorm for the rain
I'm a volcano for the mountain
I'm a diamond for the stone
And I wonder if I can be real me.
I see the crowd
I hear the noise
I keep my patience.
But inside I want to scream
Yes I want to scream like hell.
And when she call me on phone,
I wonder how she knows it.
I wonder how she hears those silent words..
How she sees those forbidden tears ...
I wonder how she knows I am missing somewhere ... — Emma Brynstein

Since nature is a beautiful temple, a beautiful temple inside the nature is a temple within the temple, it is a pearl within the pearl, a diamond within the diamond! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

We see what we want to see when we look at someone. Like a diamond before it has been cut. We can guess at its brilliance but can't see the faults until the stone has been cut and polished. Only then can we glimpse inside and see the occlusions and the clarity. — M.J. Rose

The field of U.S. cancer care is organized around a medical monopoly that ensures a continuous flow of money to the pharmaceutical companies, medical technology firms, research institutes, and government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and quasi-public organizations such as the American Cancer Society (ACS). — John Diamond

I always defined myself in terms of my talkativeness, and being without a voice hits me in a number of ways. — John Diamond

Meridian


First daylight on the bittersweet-hung
sleeping porch at high summer; dew
all over the lawn, sowing diamond-
point-highlighted shadows;
the hired man's shadow revolving
along the walk, a flash of milkpails
passing; no threat in sight, no hint
anywhere in the universe, of that

apathy at the meridian, the noon
of absolute boredom; flies
crooning black lullabies in the kitchen,
milk-soured crocks, cream separator
still unwashed; what is there to life
but chores and more chores, dishwater,
fatigue, unwanted children; nothing
to stir the longueur of afternoon

except possibly thunderheads;
climbing, livid, turreted alabaster
lit up from within by splendor and terror
-- forded lightening's
split-second disaster. — Amy Clampitt

Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory. — Neil Diamond

You're beautiful like a flower
More valuable than a diamond
You are powerful like a fire ...
There is nothing in the world that you cannot do
When you believe in you, who are beautiful
Yeah you, who are brilliant
Yeah you, who are powerful
Yeah you, who are resilient — India.Arie

Every individual believer is precious in the sight of the Lord, a shepherd would not lose one sheep, nor a jeweller one diamond, nor a mother one child, nor a man one limb of his body, nor will the Lord lose one of his redeemed people. However little we may be, if we are the Lord's, we may rejoice that we are preserved in Christ Jesus. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Effective psychotherapy works because the therapist continues to grow as a person and as a healer. — Jed Diamond

Sometimes, in a tight game with runners on, digging in at short, ready to break with the ball, a peace I'd never felt before would paralyze the diamond. For a moment of eternal stillness I felt as if I were cocked at the very heart of the Midwest. — Stuart Dybek

Today at school I will learn to read at once; then tomorrow I will begin to write, and the day after tomorrow to cipher. Then with my acquirements I will earn a great deal of money, and with the first money I have in my pocket I will immediately buy for my papa a beautiful new cloth coat. But what am I saying? Cloth, indeed! It shall be all made of gold and silver, and it shall have diamond buttons. That poor man really deserves it; for to buy me books and to have me taught he has remained in his shirt sleeves ... And in this cold! It is only fathers who are capable of such sacrifices! ... — Carlo Collodi

If you take a diamond that's raw and you put one face to it, it has that one face, and then you've gotta find another face. At the end, you're going to have this diamond that's everything you've done. I feel that's the way you should look at it because that puts you in a constant state of progress. — Suraj Sharma

Because my musical training has been limited, I've never been restricted by what technical musicians might call a song. — Neil Diamond

For example, it is only by work we extract gold from the soil. It takes work to discover the oil that is already deposited in the ground. It is work that turns a hill of coal into karats of diamond. — Sunday Adelaja

Friend is cullinan diamond, they can not be a second option as boyfriend. — Dave

This creative tension between wonderful and terrible is named so well by Gerard Manley Hopkins, as only poets can. Even the long title of his poem reveals his acceptance of the ever-changing flow of Heraclites and also his trust in the final outcome: "That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection." Flesh fade, and mortal trash fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, — Richard Rohr

These wires run a current through it. When we press the one and the nine at the same time, the current runs through the diamond and it emits a pulse that we can't hear or feel, but it..."
"Explodes ghosts."
"I prefer to think that it disperses the vestigial energy that an individual leaves behind after death."
"Or that," I said. — Maureen Johnson

Ah, the feeling you get holding a diamond in your hand! It seems to bore into your skin, to burn, to breathe. It's like holding a bit of the moon in your hand. — Anna Magnani

Prosperity Whose sources are interior. As soon Adversity A diamond overtake. — Emily Dickinson

The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain-like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there like a distant sun. At His feet stood three colossal figures, diminished to extinction, almost, by contrast
archangels
their heads level with His ankle-bone. When the Creator had finished thinking, He said, "I have thought. Behold!" He lifted His hand, and from it burst a fountain-spray of fire, a million stupendous suns, which clove the blackness and soared, away and away and away, diminishing in magnitude and intensity as they pierced the far frontiers of Space, until at last they were but as diamond nail heads sparkling under the domed vast roof of the universe. — Mark Twain

If my forehead were not like a diamond, harder than flint, I would display more holy fear and a far deeper contrition of spirit. Woe — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I myself shall continue living in my glass house where you can always see who comes to call, where everything hanging from the the ceiling and on the walls stays where it is as if by magic, where I sleep nights in a glass bed, under glass sheets, where who I am will sooner or later appear etched by a diamond. — Andre Breton

A diamond is proof that you sometimes have to go through a great deal of pressure before you can shine. — Matshona Dhliwayo

It's much harder to play myself. If I ever do a movie again, it'll be a singing serial killer. — Neil Diamond

Different rates of development on different continents, from 11,000 B.C. to A.D. 1500, were what led to the technological and political inequalities of A.D. 1500. — Jared Diamond

You know how, when you fly from coast to coast on a really clear day, looking down from many miles up, you can see the little baseball diamonds everywhere? And every time I see a baseball diamond my heart goes out to it. And I think somewhere down there- I don't see any houses, I can hardly see any roads- but I know that people down there are playing the game we all love. — Donald Hall

Admire the diamond that can bear the hits of a hammer. Many deceptive preachers, when critically examined, turn out to be false. — Kabir

Americans love that, no? To think of jewelry as a dead thing. This is why you keep the Hope Diamond next to your dinosaur bones. — Sloane Crosley

For any ranked society, whether a chiefdom or a state, one thus has to ask, why do the commoners tolerate the transfer of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocrats? This question raised by political theorists from Plato to Marx are raised anew by voters in every modern election. Kleptocracies with little public support run the risk of being overthrown, either by downtrodden commoners, or by upstart would be replacement kleptocrats seeking public support by promising a higher ratio of services rendered to fruits stolen. — Jared Diamond

Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it - a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling! — Virginia Woolf

Education is like a diamond with many facets: It includes the basic mastery of numbers and letters that give us access to the treasury of human knowledge, accumulated and refined through the ages; it includes technical and vocational training as well as instruction in science, higher mathematics, and humane letters. — Ronald Reagan

Touch a man who can't walk up right, and that lame man, he's gonna fly. — Neil Diamond

or just inventing a new letter (as our medieval ancestors did when they created the new letters j, u, and w). — Jared Diamond

Thanks to this availability of suitable wild mammals and plants, early peoples of the Fertile Crescent could quickly assemble a potent and balanced biological package for intensive food production. That package comprised three cereals, as the main carbohydrate sources; four pulses, with 20 - 25 percent protein, and four domestic animals, as the main protein sources, supplemented by the generous protein content of wheat; and flax as a source of fiber and oil (termed linseed oil: flax seeds are about 40 percent oil). Eventually, thousands of years after the beginnings of animal domestication and food production, the animals also began to be used for milk, wool, plowing, and transport. Thus, the crops and animals of the Fertile Crescent's first farmers came to meet humanity's basic economic needs: carbohydrate, protein, fat, clothing, traction, and transport. — Jared Diamond

Some people have much more pull than other people. But when I say that the public has ultimate responsibility, I'm not saying it in a moral sense. I'm just saying it in the sense of what is it that's really going to bring change. — Jared Diamond

You have to go out there and give a piece of yourself
your life, your soul. And you better give the audience everything you can
physically, emotionally, musically. Then maybe they'll accept you and give you a standing ovation at the end. — Neil Diamond

Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized religion brings two other important benefits to centralized societies. First, shared ideology or religion helps solve the problem of how unrelated individuals are to live together without killing each other - by providing them with a bond not based on kinship. Second, it gives people a motive, other than genetic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others. — Jared Diamond

There's people that figure if they hang out with you, all of a sudden they're going to be successes. I've had two or three stalkers in my life — Dustin Diamond

When Danny finally got off his knee, he took her by surprise again. He immediately began to tap a number on his mobile. Beth knew only too well who would be on the other end of the line.
'She said yes!' Danny announced triumphantly. Beth smiled as she held the diamond under the light and took a closer look. — Jeffrey Archer

If time be a ring of gold, opportunity is the rich diamond that gives it both its value and glory. — John Flavel

These days, everyone is a writer, producer and movie star. You post something on the web, get enough hits, and suddenly you have TV show. — Dustin Diamond

My teachers treated me as a diamond in the rough, someone who needed smoothing. — Mother Jones

Two million years ago, several proto-human lineages had coexisted side by side until a shake-up left only one. It now appears that a similar shake-up occurred within the last 60,000 years, and that all of us alive in the world today are descended from the winner of that upheaval. What was the last missing ingredient whose acquisition helped our ancestor to win? — Jared Diamond

I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond. — Mae West

There are three things in life that are extremely hard.
Steel, a diamond, and to know oneself. — Benjamin Franklin

Each acoustic guitar has its own character and personality. On a particular day, I might pick one up and start noodling around, looking for some emotional content in the chords. — Neil Diamond

She'd buy diamond-studded earplugs and go and lie on a beach in the Caribbean where the whining of jealous bastards wouldn't reach her. — Sophie Hannah

First I tried some Neil Diamond, thinking that if anything was going to make the undead run for the hills it would be a nice, loud rendition of Cracklin' Rosie. But those coldsickles actually seemed to enjoy it. Very disturbing. — Mike Cooley

A diamond, though set in horns, is still a diamond, and sparkles in purest gold. — Philip Massinger

Some clinicians and researchers believe that andropause is primarily the result of our loss of testosterone. It is clear to me that it is much more than that. Andropause is a multidimensional change of life with hormonal, physical, psychological, interpersonal, social, sexual, and spiritual aspects. — Jed Diamond

Yeah," Chaz says. "You know, when you packed up all your stuff and left his ass high and dry, I thought finally. A woman with some moral fiber. Little did I know that all he'd need to win you back was a big diamond ring and few crocodile tears. I really expected bigger things from you, Lizzie. Tell me something. Are you going to wait until the invitations have actually gone out before you admit to yourself that Luke is that last guy you ought to be spending the rest of your life with? Or are you going to do the right thing and call if off now? — Meg Cabot

Funny thing is, I didn't feel the least bit of sympathy for her ass. Had she taught her son what the fuck it meant when a woman says no, he wouldn't have turned out to be the way that he is. — Diamond Johnson

There were protocols to meet for the historic occasion. On the lunar dust they placed mementoes for the five-deceased American and Soviet spacemen, Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, Vladimir Komarov, and Yuri Gagarin (who died in a plane crash in 1968). They unsheathed a metal disc on the descent stage with engraved messages to future moon visitors. As Neil Armstrong read the plaque's words, his voice carried throughout the world. "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969, AD. We came in peace for all mankind." There was yet another small cargo - private and precious - carried by Neil Armstrong to the moon. It was not divulged at the time, but he carried the diamond-studded astronaut pin made especially for Deke Slayton by the three Apollo 1 astronauts and presented to him by their widows after that dreadful fire. — Alan Shepard

He figures she must contain a carbon core. A soul as hard as a diamond. So what happens when a diamond finally breaks? — Blake Crouch

She's beautiful to look at, she's new, she's clean, and perfectly cut. But then you get up and look closely and see that she's not real. She's a fake. She doesn't glimmer like a natural diamond or hold the beauty and unbreakable strength of a real diamond. She's just a manufactured piece of glass. Not the real deal. And sooner or later, that pig headed owner is gonna realize that fake diamonds can never pass for the real ones, no matter how much you wish they would. — Bink Cummings

Rather than make claims of final theories, perhaps we should focus on our ever-continuing dialogue with the universe. It is the dialogue that matters most, not its imagined end. It is the sacred act of inquiry wherein we gently trace the experienced outlines of an ever-greater whole. It is the dialogue that lets the brilliance of the diamond's infinite facets shine clearly. It is the dialogue that instills within us a power and capacity that is, and always has been, saturated with meaning. — Adam Frank

For those of us who question, your whole life becomes a question. Do you then reach some level of understanding, and then it's static? I don't think so" (age twenty-two, unlabeled) — Lisa Diamond

Under pressure, she became a diamond. Under pressure, she became unbreakable. — Anonymous

The diamond absolutes.
I am neither internee nor informer;
An inner emigre, grown long-haired
And thoughtful; a wood-kerne
Escaped from the massacre,
Taking protective colouring
From bole and bark, feeling
Every wind that blows;
Who, blowing up these sparks
For their meagre heat, have missed
The once-in-a-lifetime portent,
The comet's pulsing tose. — Seamus Heaney

After fifteen years of facing them (pitchers) you don't really get over them. They're devious. They're the only players in the game allowed to cheat. They throw illegal pitches and they sneak foreign substances on the ball. They can inflict pain whenever they wish. And, they're the only ones on the diamond who have high ground. That's symbolic. You know what they tell you in a war - 'take the high ground first.' — Richie Ashburn

Marcus's face lit up. 'Stop - I see your problem! You're thinking that time exists on the diamonds themselves. It doesn't. Each moment - each diamond - is like a snapshot.' 'A snapshot of what?' 'Of everything, everywhere! There's no time in a picture, right? It's the jumping, from one diamond to the next, that we call time, but like I said, time doesn't really exist. Like that girl just said, a diamond is a moment, and all the diamonds on the ring are happening at the same time. It's like having a drawer full of pictures.' 'On the ring,' I said. 'Yes! All the diamonds exist at once!' He looked triumphant. — Rebecca Stead

The Holy Scripture is like a diamond: in the dark it is like a piece of glass, but as soon as the light strikes it the water begins to sparkle, and the scintillation of life greets us. — Abraham Kuyper

Today at work, I couldn't help but to notice how sexy Tyrone was. I already knew he was married, because I saw the ring on his finger and when we walked past his office, I saw a picture of him and his wife in a frame. The way his dreads were — Diamond Johnson

I think it's fun to look at people with big diamonds. I see them in my audience all the time, with the fur coat, a woman whose hand is always out front, or the two fingers are on the cheek to show her diamond. I don't have anything against that. — Eartha Kitt

She noticed as if in a dream, a single diamond hair comb fall to the floor. The sparkling jewels landed face down in the mud. — Rebecca M. Gibson

Diamonds are held under tons and tons of pressure, extremely high temperatures of fire and shuffled under shifting of tectonic plates, for a long, long time! Yet when they come out from there and are put on display for their beauty; does anybody stop to evaluate the diamond based upon all the shit it's been through and say "Remember that disgusting hole it used to be in? I bet it was hell in there!" No, people don't remember where a diamond has come from; they just see the beauty of it now. But it wouldn't have become so beautiful, you know, if not for all of that! So why should we look at other people, or at ourselves and evaluate them/ourselves based upon their/our pasts? Shouldn't we forget that? And only see the beauty that is in front of our eyes? Whatever it was, it made you beautiful! And that is what matters! — C. JoyBell C.

I'm lucky. Hard work is the key, but luck plays a part. — Neil Diamond

If you sell diamonds, you cannot expect to have many customers. But a diamond is a diamond even if there are no customers. — A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

You are not beneath me. I am so not beneath you. I might not be as glamorous as what you are accustom to but I am a diamond in the rut. It doesn't matter how pretty one of those Chinese store accessories are, they will never worth more than the dirtiest diamond in the deepest parts of the earth's core. That my dear is a fact. — Crystal Evans

Psychotherapy is a practice that many different professional disciplines engage. Psychiatrists are also medical doctors and increasingly offer medication and do less and less actual therapy. — Jed Diamond

Only those who do not expect anything are never disappointed. Only those who never try, never fail. Anyone who is currently achieving anything in life is simultaneously risking failure. It is always better to fail in doing something than to excel in doing nothing. A flawed diamond is more valuable than a perfect brick. People who have no failures also have few victories. — John Landis Mason

That rough-looking diamond is put upon the wheel of the lapidary. He cuts it on all sides. It loses much
much that seemed costly to itself. The king is crowned; the diadem is put upon the monarch's head with trumpet's joyful sound. A glittering ray flashes from that coronet, and it beams from that very diamond which was just now so sorely vexed by the lapidary. You may venture to compare yourself to such a diamond, for you are one of God's people; and this is the time of the cutting process. Let faith and patience have their perfect work, for in the day when the crown shall be set upon the head of the King, Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, one ray of glory shall stream from you. "They shall be mine," saith the Lord, "in the day when I make up my jewels." "Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The size of a diamond doesn't indicate the size of my love for you. The earth hasn't produced a diamond that big because my love for you knows no bounds. Ronin Black — Lorelei James

Men have a higher death rate than women for nine out of ten leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, injuries, cerebrovascular disease, chronic lower respiratory disease, diabetes, pneumonia and flu, HIV infection, suicide, and homicide. We all die of something, but if you're a guy, you are more likely to get a serious disease and die from it than are women. — Jed Diamond

Yauch was a gifted MC. — Michael Diamond

Aah, God help us, how sleazy is it, and how has it come to this? a rented palace, a denial of the passage of time, a mogul on the black-diamond slopes of the IT sector thinks he's a rock star. — Thomas Pynchon

I've always had my ear pierced with a diamond stud. I did it myself when I was 16. — Vinnie Jones

While the sun God will may your day, sing as a song in search of a voice that is silent, and the one God will make for your way. — Neil Diamond

I feel the most natural thing is for music to come that way because it's sort of like poetry. Though I do think with poets that I like, like Charles Olson or Ezra Pound, they were rewriting constantly, until the poem becomes a diamond.But with music I don't really feel that way. — Stephen Malkmus

In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond. — Wesley Hill

She wanted to know what American writers I liked. "Hawthorne, Henry James, Emily Dickinson ... " "No, living." Ah, well, hmm, let's see: how difficult, the rival factor being what it is, for a contemporary author, or would-be author, to confess admiration for another. At last I said, "Not Hemingway - a really dishonest man, the closet-everything. Not Thomas Wolfe - all that purple upchuck; of course, he isn't living. Faulkner, sometimes: Light in August. Fitzgerald, sometimes: Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tender Is the Night. I really like Willa Cather. Have you read My Mortal Enemy?" With no particular expression, she said, "Actually, I wrote it. — Truman Capote

I need to find a way out of here and when I did, I was sending Troy back for Diamond's ass. I couldn't wait to let Blaize and Tiff know about their damn mother. — Myiesha

As laser-bright moments; diamond-hard memories; crisp and clear. A future lived, a future savored, a future of moments so sharp and pointed that they would sometimes cut and sometimes glint so brightly it would hurt to contemplate them, but sometimes, too,
would be joyous, an absolute, pure, unalloyed joy, the kind of joy he hadn't felt much if at all lo these twenty-one years. — Robert J. Sawyer

Even in rainier areas, where dust is less inexorable and submits to brooms and rags, it is generally detested, because dust is not organized and is therefore considered aesthetically bankrupt. Our light is not kind to faint diffuse spreading things. Our soft comfortable light flatters carefully organized, formally structured things like wedding cakes with their scrolls and overlapping flounces.
It takes the mortal storms of a star to transform dust into something incandescent. Our dust, shambling and subtractive as it is, would be radiant, if we were close enough to such a star, to that deep and dangerous light, and we would be ravished by the vision - emerald shreds veined in gold, diamond bursts fraught with deep-red flashes, aqua and violet and icy-green astral manifestations, splintery blinking harbor of light, dust as it can be, the quintessence of dust. — Amy Leach

to support this privileged class as long as they kept up their end of the bargain with effective rituals. But after 650, deforestation, erosion, and soil exhaustion began reducing crop yields. The working classes, the farmers and monument builders, may have suffered increasing hunger and disease, even as the rulers hogged an ever-larger share of resources. The society was heading for a crisis. Diamond writes: "We have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities." (If this sounds familiar, I would note that archaeology is thick with cautionary tales that speak directly to the twenty-first century.) — Douglas Preston