“for a purpose without reason”

“One cannot take a coward on dangerous missions or trust ones fortune to a fool. How then are cowards and fools to be employed?”

“A woman stood in front of her with the peculiar poise that comes before the discovery of age and after the loss of innocence.”

“A man who never makes mistakes has long since ceased to do anything new. A man who is always making mistakes is a doomed man with swollen ambitions. But he who judiciously salts success with mistak...”

“Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still t...”

“Contradictions do not perplex the logician. They arise because there are more rules to an open game than can be known.”

“The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.”

“At the age of 45, most days in Tucson were spent feeling like I was on the summit of Mauna Kea, as I was exhibiting debilitating health symptoms that corresponded to what I saw at very high altitud...”

“The hour is only long thus, if you've waited.”

“A few blossoms float into the room. They drop like frayed yellow ribbons on the gray carpet.”

“Gula and Cali lie on their sides, their tiny adder-mouths showing the pink of their palates, their bodies throbbing with lustful and obscene dreams. The sky releases its burden of sun and color. Ey...”

“... there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his grasp again.”

“Life is all about practicing for heaven." p 101.”

“The vaunted experience of age was perhaps only a matter of wounds and scarring -- that young minds to old minds might be as young bodies to old bodies: stronger, more vital, less twisted by damage.”

“And because Eddie knew that was only the truth, he said nothing.”