A good memory is needed after one has lied.

It takes good memory to keep up a lie.

One ought to have a good memory when he has told a lie.

Ambition aspires to descend.

A text of Tibetan Buddhism describes the time of death as a unique opportunity for spiritual liberation from the cycles of death and rebirth and a period that determines our next incarnation.

Physically my brain is in great shape. My motor functions are fine, but I think going through the whole ordeal... coming pretty close to death, may have affected my priorities.

That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said - one of the famous lady novelists - 'unhappy is the family that contains an author'?

Sentencing a political opponent to death after a show trial is no different to taking him out on the street and shooting him. In fact, it is worse because using the court system as a tool of state repression makes a mockery of the rule of law.