Without war there are no heroes. What harm would that be? Oh, Lavinia, what a woman's question that is.

... the habit of literature [is] the best defense against believing the half-truths of ideologues and the lies of demagogues.

Not even need and love can defeat fate.

Almost everything is double like that for adolescents; their lies are true and their truths are lies, and their hearts are broken by the world. They gyre and fall; they see through everything, and are blind.

Life goes on, even if two-headed and glowing faintly in the dark.

It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man's fate is not important. "If it is not, what is?" He could not endure those remembered words.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.