emotion clouds the rational, and many perspectives guide the full reality. To view current events as a historian is to account for all perspectives, even those of your enemy. It is to know the past and to use such relevant history as a template for expectations. It is, most of all, to force reason ahead of instinct, to refuse to demonize that which you hate, and to, most of all, accept your own fallibility.

Because in fantasy perhaps more than in any other genre, the character is rewarded for making the right choices and punished for making the bad. Ask Boromir.

A span of a few heartbeats can make for a greater memory than the sum of a mundane year.-Catti-brie

Everyone dies. It is how one lives that matters.

Never confuse honor with stupidity!

I do not know why I care," Drizzt answered honestly. His eyes turned back to his ancient homeland, where loyalty was merely a device to gain an advantage over a common foe. "Perhaps I care because I strive to be different from my people," he said, as much to himself as to Bruenor. "Perhaps I care because I am different from my people. I may be more akin to race of the surface...that is my hope at least. I care because I have to care about something.

...a third [of three] had died in his bunk of natural causes--for a dagger in the heart quite naturally ends one's life.