remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents.

Hell yeah! Twitter was proof that leaderless self-organizing systems could be true agents of change.

There is history the way Tolstoy imagined it, as a great, slow-moving weather system in which even tsars and generals are just leaves before the storm. And there is history the way Hollywood imagines it, as a single story line in which the right move by the tsar or the wrong move by the general changes everything. Most of us, deep down, are probably Hollywood people. We like to invent “what if” scenarios--what if x had never happened, what if y had happened instead?--because we like to believe that individual decisions make a difference: that, if not for x, or if only there had been y, history might have plunged forever down a completely different path. Since we are agents, we have an interest in the efficacy of agency.

We live in a society where interacting with government agents is apotentially hazardous activity

An author who gives a manager or publisher any rights in his work except those immediately and specifically required for its publication or performance is for business purposes an imbecile.

Now, Mr. Antonio. I understand that there are people who are close to you who want me dead.”“No, mija. They don’t want you dead.”“Then explain this.” I handed him the picture.He chuckled again.“No, they don’t want you dead. That would be too easy. They want revenge.”Cold sweat broke out all over me, but I kept my face calm. I looked at him straight in the eye.“Well, then they are going to be quite disappointed, aren’t they?” I flashed my teeth at him.“Senorita, you might want to warn Senor Smith, you see, my nephew he doesn’t like to share, and if he sees another man after you, he’ll get very, eh, aggressive.” The silver fox looked at me and winked.“Oh, he won’t have to worry.” I said as I was walking out the door. “I doubt he will be alive long enough to know Agent Smith.”Then I slammed the door.

She stared at Raven in a long second of shocked silence, before sagging to the floor.

Are you a house-wife, Mrs Silvers?' he asked. 'What would you recommend for getting burger relish out of a white shirt?'The seething woman cranked the venom-level of her gaze up to eleven, and Raven smiled pleasantly back.

Well, whatever happened here today...' he said, turning back to Popescu and donning his own sunglasses so he could discreetly cast his gaze over her figure,'...it was only the beginning.

Raven scowled at her. 'Fine. But if I accidentally shoot you because my aim is shaky, because I'm too tense, because I wasn't given the chance to relax before going into a potentially very dangerous situation, you'll be happy blaming only yourself?

When interacting with corporate government agents, always assume that they are corrupt until proven otherwise.

You know that when ex-military personnel start assassinating their own government's agents that something funky is going on.

When I finally find that one willing agent, I'll have found my prize in the Cracker Jack box.

God gave us his word of salvation, for us to become the agents of His principles and the doers of His will, His judgment on earth

Little by little the agents have taken over the world. They don't do anything, they don't make anything, they just stand and take their cut.

Nobody seems to know which came first; egg or chicken – except of course for agents of the Time Saving Agency – who can find out anything about, well – anything. The only trouble is, they aren’t talking – however, you can take it from me – they know. The answer to these and other puzzles are kept safe and secure behind fire-walls and thick security doors secured with, er – time-locks, where one could possibly find answers to many other troubling questions, and not all of them necessarily relating to chickens.