Always live your life with your biography in mind.

But when you flee someone, no matter how far you roam, that person will follow you as doggedly as the stars.

Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.

…how monstrous the people you loved could be.

Always live your life with your biography in mind," Dad was fond of saying. "Naturally, it won't be published unless you have a Magnificent Reason, but at the very least you will be living grandly.

Most people ended up, after only a couple of months, so far away from where they'd intended to go, stuck in some barbed underbrush of a quagmire when they'd meant to head straight to the ocean.

He said you couldn't pretend the terrible things in life didn't happen. You can't clean it up. You keep all the refuse and the scars. It's how you learn. And try to make improvements.