Teachers're always using that "in your own words." I hate that. Authors knit their sentences tight. It's their job. Why make us unpick them, just to put it back together more shonkily? How're you s'posed to say Kapellmeister if you can't say Kapellmeister?

When I think about it, I'm happily bewildered that people will preorder my books They'll preorder me. What a lucky guy!

I'm from a time and place where bigheadedness was a really savage crime, and you'd get cut down for it by your peers and parents.

Oh, diplomacy ... it mops up war's spillages; legitimizes its outcomes; gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents.

Do ants get headaches?

As long as you can Houdini your way out of the Sisyphean constraints then originality happens.

The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.