Magic is a matter of focusing the disciplined will. But sometimes the will must be abandoned. The secret lies in knowing when to exercise control, and when to let go.

Some knowledge and some song and some beauty must be kept for those days before the world again plunges into darkness.

Rome was mud and smoky skies; the rank smell of the Tiber and the exotically spiced cooking fires of a hundred different nationalities. Rome was white marble and gilding and heady perfumes; the blare of trumpets and the shrieking of market-women and the eternal, sub-aural hum of more people, speaking more languages than Gaius had ever imagined existed, crammed together on seven hills whose contours had long ago disappeared beneath this encrustation if humanity. Rome was the pulsing heart of the world.

Love is the only prayer I know.

On one occasion I shared a bed with about seven other people, but we were all having a party overnight

We were discussing civilization and the fact that young men among the Greeks at that time were idiots and uneducated, so the men had emotional and friendly relationships with members of their own sex

What wise God would consign a man to Hell for ignorance, instead of teaching him better in the afterlife?