If the totals were the point, you should stop now.
You are not going to stop now.

So the totals were not the point,
and you have spent fifteen years letting the whole room —
and more expensively, yourself — believe that they were.

The question is not why the number fell.
The question is what you would have said this was for,
if anybody had thought to ask you in a good year.

The Book of the King — Wall 45:8