David ran through concrete advantages. And then set aside the practical. The pragmatist was gone, replaced by the poet and mystic.

I have lived most of my life in soldiers’ camps. I know what they saw. I know how they think. Their confidence sours as sudden as curdled milk.

I thought it best to add nothing further, to let the line of his thought lead him to his own conclusions.

Avner had lived too long and become too canny to claim the crown of Israel for himself.

Even though he said no store in uncanny things, he was soldier enough to value with whatever weapon came to hand.

When a kingdom rests on it, I always expect difficulty. Then, if there is none, no blame. But if there is, one is prepared.

No one sits, as you do, so close to a king, who does not begin to grasp how the levers of power work, and the cost of the oil that must grease them.

This night he was a king before he was a man. At this time, this troubled me. Later, I would have cause to wish it were always so.

He is able to put aside personal feelings and see the broad strokes. Experience counts in these things.

If soldiering did not interest him, the soldiers themselves were another matter. He loved to sit with the men and draw out their first-hand stories of past campaigns.

The stories that grow up around a king are strong vines with a fierce grip.

The nights were long, like the braids of a pretty girl, and the days were short, like a girl's sense. ("The North")

It's not like I had to throw the football and deal with that as well. It was more disheartening, to be honest with you, just to kind of see how the National Football League really is.

I have never understood the liberal assumption that if there were justice in the world, there would be fewer rather than more prisoners.

If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you're driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation.

But I think that I'm just a normal girl, you know.

Courage is not the absence of fear, courage is acting in spite of fear.

You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon.

Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed-men, and such as sleep o'nights; Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

It matters not what you are thought to be, but what you are.

Sometimes I wish I weren't famous.