I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.

“The past was not always the past. At one time the past was the present, and at another time it was the future,” she said. “Is this not so? Therefore, all depends upon the relative perspective of the observer in any timeline. Since everything has already happened, there is a record, already, of what we call the future, which we access each moment as the future drips into the present. You can also access the future in visions and dreams,” she said.”

“William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was: "A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.”

“La ciencia nos ofrece una nueva visión del mundo que ha liberado el espíritu humano, o al menos tiene el potencial de hacerlo. Lo más importante de la ciencia es la ciencia misma, es decir, la forma de proceder que nos ha acercado a un profundo entendimiento de cómo es el mundo.”

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolveAnd, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.”

“What enables one person to launch a business at fifty when other people, faced with being laid off, simply roll over and give up, or take anything they can find? What keeps some people locked into a job they hate (surely I'm not talking about you here!) while others are living into that ever-expanding evolutionary vision of themselves? Again, I think it's in your DNA -- the DNA of success,”

“We are excited to be playing a key role in Cisco's execution of their IP next generation network vision. As the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, Cisco recognizes that a policy-driven resource control layer is needed to effectively drive powerful triple-play features. With the Broadband Policy Manager, Cisco is able to empower their service provider customers to tap into the world of high-margin premium IP services that excite and attract both consumer and enterprise subscribers.”

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.”

In an era of globalization, we recognize that we are part of a global society, but we have no idea how to make such a society work. So far, no unified vision or leadership has emerged to guide us in this endeavor. We have not yet found a way to expand the spiritual ideals of democracy so that they pertain to every human being, every animal, and every plant. Until we do, human civilization and the Earth's ecosystem will continue to be in peril.

Fiction---good fiction, anyway---is dream made flesh, given purpose and drive, and set on a quest to show us the best in us and to give us the power and the tools to dream beyond reality's 'merely good enough' to a vision of what is truly great......and then to give us the stories of men and women of character who in turn inspire those of us who dare to reach for the truly great within ourselves.THAT is why you write fiction.