If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.

The core of literature is the idea of tragedy... You don't really learn much from the good things that happen to you.

In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments.

He lay on his back in his blankets and looked our where the quartermoon lay cocked over the heel of the mountains. In the false blue dawn the Pleiades seemed to be rising up into the darkness above the world and dragging all the stars away, the great diamond of Orion and Cepella and the signature of Cassiopeia all rising up through the phosphorous dark like a sea-net. He lay a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within.

Fear of an enemy can often blind men to other hazards, not least the shape which they themselves make in the world.

Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I'd made before it.

If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?