And the reason Luke is thinking about time and free will is because he believes that money is the closest human beings have ever come to crystallizing time and free will into a compact physical form. Cash. Cash is a time crystal. Cash allows you to multiply your will, and it allows you to speed up time. Cash is what defines us as a species. Nothing else in the universe has money.

Humans are part of nature, and nature is one great big wood chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones, and hair.

Because in the end we forget everything, anyway. We're human; we're amnesia machines.

What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.

Every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that's sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar.