Bitter Gold Hearts

Even when you have your mind made up, you can’t stay blind to reality forever.

“I know what I’m doing.”

You usually think you do. Occasionally you are correct.

You don’t alter the past, turn the tide, or change yourself by brooding about your hidden motives. You will surprise yourself every time, anyway. Nobody ever figures out why.

Often all we need to be civil with one another is the presence of a referee we don’t want thinking us fools.

Or maybe I was too suspicious. This business can do that to you. You have to remember to keep it simple. You don’t need to look for the great sinuous, complicated schemes reeking of subterfuge and malice when a little stupidity followed by desperate cover-up efforts will explain everything just as well. And you have to remember to keep an eye out for who stands to gain. That alone will flag your villain eight times out of ten.

Time was the enemy never to be conquered and there were no reserves to help stay the tide.

You get paranoid in this business. But maybe paranoids get that way because of all the people out to get them.