When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

If you want to catch something, running after it isn't always the best way.

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.

How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?

Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward.

This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods. Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.