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

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.

All the worry people expend over not existing after they die, yet nary a one ever seems to spare a moment to worry about not having existed before they were conceived. Or at all. After all, one sperm over and we would have been our sisters, and we'd never have been missed.

For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair. The medications helped, too, I thought, sir.

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.

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

He's not too short. He's just... concentrated.