And so began something that had not quite begun and would not soon end, with many people in many places moving off in directions and on missions which they all mistakenly thought they understood. That was just as well. The future was too fearful for contemplation, and beyond the expected, illusory finish lines were things fated by the decisions made this morning -- and, once decided, best unseen.

Fix your eyes forward on what you can do, not back on what you cannot change.

Back in pre-Revolutionary America cruel and unusual punishment meant the rack and burning at the stake... in more recent rulings it has been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons.

I've been telling people for 12 years that if you want to get a nuclear device into the United States, just bring it through the port of Miami disguised as cocaine.

Suspense is achieved by information control: What you know. What the reader knows. What the characters know.

Privacy and loneliness were the traditional luxuries accorded to a skipper.

Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.