BRILLIANCE

'...to be brilliant is not enough. There are plenty of brilliant people screwing up the world. Sound judgment and integrity are also required...'

Chris Mullin, Decline & Fall: Diaries 2005-2010, p.33.

BRILLIANT

'"Awesome," I said, in a peculiar way, I knew, our generation had of finding that everything either 'sucked' or was 'awesome.' We used awesome the way that the British used brilliant: for anything at all. Perhaps, as with the British, it was a kind of antidepressant: inflated rhetoric to keep the sorry truth at bay.'

Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs, p.76.