On the whole it were better to misguide a child in knowledge, which it can remedy later, than to mistone it in feeling, for which there is no remedy. A jarring note implanted in its nature might spoil the music of its life […]

Here, in front, the deserted street was white and black and silent, under the electric lamps. All the lonelier for two wretched gamins, counting their dirty sous, and draggled newspapers.

All the while, a bogeyman served him well—not a return to communism, Yeltsin’s scarecrow, but the chaos of Yeltsinism.

The company was one of Silicon Valley's more famous dot-com flame-outs.