For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

Today you can buy the Dialogues of Plato for less than you would spend on a fifth of whiskey, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the price of a cheap shirt. You can buy a fair beginning of an education in any bookstore with a good stock of paperback books for less than you would spend on a week's supply of gasoline.

A true gentleman is at a disadvantage in dealing with women. Women are realists, and their tactics are realistic, so no man should be a gentleman where women are concerned unless the women are very, very old or very, very young. Women admire gentlemen, and sleep with cads.

My lady had the body of a siren, the face of a goddess, and the mind of an Armenian camel dealer.

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

The Apache don't have a word for love," he said. "Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw-taking ceremony?" "Tell me." "Varlebena. It means forever. That's all they say.

After a few days, I mused, I would have no trouble. Whoever heard of a revolution of fat men?