because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

People love to hear the brag of the local boy, because they want him to be great, but the foreigner must deny that he has any outstanding virtue - this is what will endear him to the locals.

History is an omlette. THe eggs are already broken.

There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good,' to behave in a way that is for the benefit of the whole community.

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors--we hope--of your life come from reading fiction.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

[T]he politically correct are above the rules of ordinary civility, once they have identified you as an unbeliever in their religion.