Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures.

Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.

I take it as a man's duty to restrain himself.

Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same.

But have you ever overheard two women discussing men? Men are crude liars, comparing their drabs, but women - I'd rather have [an] anatomist dissect me alive than to listen to the things the ladies say about us when they think they are alone.

One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.

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.