"I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours. I said that."
— Bob Dylan

The Gettysburg Address was written in a few hours and took but a few minutes to read. The other public official who spoke on that occasion went on for two hours and nobody remembers who he was or what he said. Some of the clearest utterances are composed in a great hurry under a strict deadline. When people work on something for too long they can lose focus, become wordy, and end up with a pile of mush. That's why I practice writing aphorisms. If you can't make your point in one paragraph, then maybe you have no point to make.

Another way my aphorisms come into this world is through self-plagiarism. Since, like all thermodynamic systems, I like to optimize my energy outflow, I will occasionally pluck a sentence or paragraph out of an existing work that is ready to stand on its own feet. Please give each of my children an equal opportunity to fall on its face and be forgiven. As has pointed out, politics was invented by chimpanzees. See . According to William Butler Yeats,

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

I think I agree with him, but with , of course, you never really know. And it doesn't matter. Would you like to make your confession? [flustered] Your eminence, I it's been so long I wouldn't know where to It's been 30 years. I'd use up too much of your time. I always have time to save souls. Well I am beyond redemption. I hear my own priests' confessions here. The urge to confess can be overwhelming. What is the point of confessing if I do not repent? I hear you are a practical man. What have you got to lose, eh? Go on. [hesitantly] I I betrayed my wife. Go on, my son. I betrayed myself. I killed men, and I ordered men to be killed. Go on, my son, go on. I ah, it's useless. Go on, my son. [choking up] I killed I ordered the death of my brother. He injured me. [sobbing] I killed my father's son. I killed my father's son! Your sins are terrible, and it is just that you suffer.