Besides, they cast an eye to the past, they didn't disgrace the ground they trod and they believed in the future again. That's what a victory does for you.

People, and boys the worst, are so much more intelligent than what comes out of their mouths.

Evil is abstract but existent. It's a negativity: untruth, dishonesty, abuse of trust. Evil, for us, isn't in-built - into people, into the cosmic scheme, but is a violation.

Temujin had had not the slightest notion that bad emotion can just grow and grow from inside you and squeeze out the universe.

Temujin watched Borte's ballet, her elegance on the fulcrum of her hips.

For a few heady weeks of the year the steppe in a binge throws out a wilderness of flowers that tangle your hooves and confuse your horse.

And I saw you and I thought, she'd be a cosy fit inside my arm.

Temujin nodded. He had every intention to do his bit in the battle, like his mother.

When it comes to the core of who we are, it takes incredible effort to shift more than one standard deviation from the mean of your life.

It is inhuman to continue a war which could easily be ended.

To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise!

She still felt his gaze on her like the brush of a finger across the back of her neck, making her shiver.

When we are young, friends are, like everything else, a matter of course. In the old days we know what it means to have them.

This (Vietnam) was a land of rebellious barons. It was like Europe in the Middle Ages. But what were the Americans doing here? Columbus had not yet discovered their country.

Hormones were as potent as whiskey, and twice as sneaky.

A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.

A writer is in the broadest sense a spokesman of his community. Through him that community comes to know its heart. Without such knowledge, how long can it survive?

Revenge is more wild, less calculated...deeply personal. Retribution is a punishment that is morally right and fully deserved. (Mitch Rapp)