We may not have demon fathers dangling offers of infernal power before us, but everyone understands what it means to struggle with temptation or resist the urge to give in to our baser natures.

When Love cast me out, it was Cruelty who took pity upon me

There is no fulfillment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire

To have a traitor for an ally is to have an enemy in waiting

Beauty is at its most poignant when the cold hand of Death holds poised to wither it imminently.

That which yields is not always weak.

Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best?

It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.

All knowledge is worth having

The pain of the flesh is naught to that of the heart

And having once chosen, never to seek to return to the crossroads of that decision-for even if one chooses wrongly, the choice cannot be unmade.

Identity is the history that has gone into bone and blood and reshaped the flesh. Identity is not what we were but what we have become what we are at this moment.

There are some things in life that just are. They are meant to be, and to fight against them is to ensure your own loss.

It has been said with some meaning that if men would but rest in silence, they might always hear the music of the spheres.

Besides the five senses, there is a sixth sense, of equal importance--the sense of duty.

War is a bankruptcy of policy

Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.

The more we're doing to ensure we're following our joy and passion, that's when we really start to put the gas in our lives.

Losing a parent over eight years is a very dark journey. I spent the first four years feeling bad and angry and sorry for myself.

To use the terms that are reserved for official enemies, it is the commissars and apparatchiks, not the dissidents, who are respected and privileged within their own societies.

A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death.