Actually loneliness has a kind of fascination; it's a state of egotistical, inner grace that you can achieve only by standing guard on old, forgotten roads that no one travels anymore.

he looked around at the books on the walls, at their dark, worn spines, and he seemed to hear a strange, distant murmur coming from them. each of the closed books was a door, and behind it stirred shadows, voices, sounds, heading toward him from a deep, dark place.

The world is full of banks and rivers running between them, of men and women crossing bridges and fords, unaware of the consequences, not looking back or beneath their feet, and with no loose change for the boatman.

...the problem with words is that once spoken, they cannot find their way back to the speaker alone.

She loves you, loathes you, treats you well, then ill. Like a leech or a surgeon's knife, she's double-edged: sometimes she'll cure, but sometimes she will kill.

You don't choose your friends, they choose you, and you either reject them or you accept them without reservations.

Chess is all about getting the king into check, you see. It's about killing the father. I would say that chess has more to do with the art of murder than it does with the art of war.