There's no such thing as forever.

Friendship is also a kind of medicine, and the markets for it, too, are sometimes black.

but there's no nation uncorrupted. there's no system that's immune to the misuse of money.

If you make your heart into a weapon, you end up using it on yourself.

You can never tell what people have inside them until you start taking it away, one hope at a time

I think the novel form chose me. I was a writer before I became a criminal... my first instinct was to write.

Sooner or later, fate puts us together with all the people, one by one, who show us what we could, and shouldn’t, let ourselves become. Sooner or later we meet the drunkard, the waster, the betrayer, the ruthless mind, and the hate-filled heart. But fate loads the dice, of course, because we usually find ourselves loving or pitying almost all of those people. And it’s impossible to despise someone you honestly pity, and to shun someone you truly love.