Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving.

"It was suicide, wasn't it?" "In an involuntary sort of way," said Vorob'yev. "These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy, when the principal won't cooperate." "Thirty-two stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they ever saw?" murmured Ivan, clearly fascinated by the gossip. "Exactly, my lord."

There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.

It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be.

I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.

Any communitys arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.

Adversity does teach who your real friends are.