Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.

Trade is much superior to piracy. You can rob and kill a man but once, but you can cheat him again and again.

Enemies can be an incentive to survive and become someone in spite of them. Enemies can keep you alert and aware.

A writer's brain is like a magician's hat. If you're going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first.

A little rest and meditation often saves a lot of riding over rough country.

Revenge could steal a man's life until there was nothing left but emptiness.

It is an old custom of these people to pick up a stone and toss it on the pile. Perhaps it is a symbolical lightening of the load they carry, perhaps a small offering to the gods of the trails.