A world ought to have a few genuine good guys, and not just a spectrum of people running from bad to worse.

Any man who barely sustains an armistice with himself has no business poking around in an alien soul.

I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled towards absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks.

I'm an incurable romantic. The essence of romance is an unshakable conviction that next time will be different.

Books are nothing but repositories for those lies the author wants his reader to believe.

The people come from everywhere, from five hundred miles, to find their fortunes. By fortune is an ugly, two-faced goddess. When you have lived with her handiwork for half a generation, you hardly notice anymore. You forget that this is not the way life has to be. You cease to marvel at just how much evil man con conjure by existing.

. . .and the thing that you know to be true is the lie that will kill you.