Book: Hyperion

It sold nineteen million copies "of a Dying Earth-2".
- Well, - summed up the Tirena. Audience formed.
- But the first "Dying Earth" sold trimillennium edition!
- "The way of the pilgrim", - she said. - "Mein Kampf". It happens once in a century. And even less often.
- But three billion...
'Listen,' said tyrena. - In the twentieth century on Old Earth was a network of snack bars. In them the meat of dead cows fried in rendered fat, adding a little bit of carcinogens, then wrapped in plastic synthesized from petroleum, and sold nine hundred billion servings a year. And the people ate. So.

The conclusion of killing a man two inseparable demons: restlessness and inattention.

... the essence of human life lies not in the so-called commemorative days like weddings and triumphs, which stuck in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the monotonous flow of everyday events: a weekend when every family member is busy with his own Affairs, casual encounters, trifling conversations, which are immediately forgotten... but the amount of these watches represents something very important and eternal.

A street fight can not fail to inspire disgust, but energy manifested by its participants, appeals to the sense of beauty: in the scuffle, the commoner shows his dexterity.

... when public pressure is replaced by the totalitarian prodding, the laws tend to be forgotten, if not sent to landfill.