There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.

As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor

Like integrity, love of life was not a subject to be studied, it was a contagion to be caught. And you had to catch it from someone who had it.

If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?

Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.

I began my writing career in a very isolated place and time.

Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.