...the wrath of God pales beside that of man.

Why had his mother gone to the trouble of bringing him into the world if the most exciting moment in his life was having been made lame by a bayonet?

Time is a river sweeping away all that is born towards the darkest shore.

There is little more I can add short of dissecting the man, or going into intimate details such as the modest proportions and slight southeasterly curvature of his manhood.

Merrick belonged to that class of reader who was able to forget with amazing ease the hand moving the characters behind the scenes of the novel.

Because between doing something and doing nothing, this is all I can do.

And so everything depends on you, Bertie. Bishop or rook. Your life or mine. Do what you believe you have to do.

...but there are stories that cannot begin at their beginning, and perhaps this is one of them.

The road to hell was paved with the bones of men who did not know when to quit fighting.

It's okay to fail 'cause there's no failure, you're just informing the richness of your experience, and that's - that's the greatest gift you can possibly give yourself.

I think I can get five, six, seven more years out of this arm and these legs.

You choose the life you want for yourself, and then you just shut up and go about it. That's how I've lived my life.

The God knows when to smile.

There is a price tag on human liberty. That price is the willingness to assume the responsibilities of being free men. Payment of this price is a personal matter with each of us.

Unlikely accomplishments are borne out of single-minded purposefulness. Future superstars don't get there by keeping part of their heart in reserve.

Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite process.

Certain I am, that Christian Religion does no where allow Rebellion.

Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization.