Information is the mortar that both builds and destroys empires.

We cannot choose the times we live in. Just as, sometimes, we cannot choose whom we love.

Humiliation scars deeper than the lash.

Love wasn't a piece of music you could play over and over again with different interpretations. It actually needed to be improvised as you went along.

The worst enemy is one whose doctrines are founded in hate and are thus beyond debate.

A man who denies his past is a man who truly denies himself a future, for he refuses to know himself, and to deny knowledge of oneself is to stumble through life as handicapped as the blind mute.

I was very fierce and very driven at eighteen. But my basic philosophy I think has stayed the same, I'm still an atheist, I still believe strongly in the power of free will (despite the mysticism in my prose). I don't believe in the notion of a pre-ordained destiny, and I think because of the sudden death of my father at sixteen I learnt then that it is essential to live life to the fullest as it could be snatched away at any second.