The world is all change, my friend. We all would like to go back, but the past is done. We must look forwards. We must change ourselves, however painful it may be, or be left behind.

Every war carries within it the seeds of the next.

One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.

Enough pain makes a coward of anyone.

A set of huge marble busts stared smugly down from on high: great merchants and financiers of Styrian history, by the look of them. Criminals made heroes by colossal success.

Are you entirely sure of that knot?' asked Morveer. 'There is no place in the plan for a lengthy drop'.'Twenty-eight strides', said Friendly.'What?''The drop'.A brief pause, 'That is not helpful'.

Men are brittle, I reckon. They don't bend into new shapes. They get broken into them. Crushed into them.

Memories sharp enough to cut himself on - the smells, the sounds, the feel of the air on his skin, the desperate hope and mad anger.

A man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he find entirely beyond sufferance

I apologise, your Highness. Murder can be a painful business.

Bravery is the dead man’s virtue.

Everything you go through grows you.

The promise to save or create a ‘perfect’ humanity is almost always only and excuse for the urge to rule it.

I grew up in Los Angeles in a Quaker family, and for me being Quaker was a political calling rather than a religious one.

Be nice. (The world is a small town.)

I don't want to fail the audience. I don't want to let them down.

No one is any one thing.

As Agatha Swanburne once said, 'To be kept waiting is unfortunate, but to be kept waiting with nothing interesting to read is a tragedy of Greek proportions.

While it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.

no one bears witness for the witness

I’m in pain. That’s the only way I get your attention