“A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.”

“Once a wolf, always a wolf.”

“Betray a friend, and you'll often find you have ruined yourself.”

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

“All men are more concerned to recover what they lose than to acquire what they lack.”

“Do not waste your pity on a scamp.”

“How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to...”

“I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it did not care a whit about the hopes and reams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as crue...”

“I wept for my family, all if us, my beautiful, idyllic, lost family. I wept for our excesses, our delusions and inconsistencies; not that we had cared too much or too little, although both were tru...”

“Government loses its claim to legitimacy when it fails to fulfill its obligations.”

“[W]hen it's slow, they send you home, and when it's busy, they expect you to stay late. They also expect you to be able to come in to cover someone's shift if a co-worker gets sick at the last minu...”

“Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to p...”

“A man may beg, but a woman has to sell.”