The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.

To hell with luck. I'll bring the luck with me.

Something, or something awful or something wonderful was certain to happen on every day in this part of Africa.

Romance was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes.

I felt very lonely when they were all there.

Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it.

I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.