Advice,' Doña Vorchenza chuckled. 'Advice. The years play a sort of alchemical trick, transmuting one's mutterings to a state of respectability. Give advice at forty and you're a nag. Give it at seventy and you're a sage.

Stand aside, and try not to catch fire if I shed sparks of genius.

Nobody admires anyone else without qualification. If they do they're after an image, not a person.

We like what we like, we want what we want, and nobody needs to give us permission to feel that way!

As for history, we are living in its ruins. And as for biographies, we are living with the consequences of all the decisions ever made in them. I tend not to read them for pleasure. It’s not unlike carefully scrutinizing the map when one has already reached the destination.

In the glass burrow beneath their feet, the flames began to rise. First the flames, and then the screams

I think piracy is a bit like drinking. You want to stay out all night doing it, you pay the price the next day.