When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.

To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.

More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.

Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.

The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.

Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.

One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.

Magic was merely the unknown, a wild thing undefined by logic or reason.

We are only different because there exists something to be different from, and it is this difference that bonds us.

I stole comic books from my brother when I was a kid, but I was never like an avid fan. I can't claim to be like a comic book geek.

Now I have shed my first blood. I feel no qualms, no pride, no remorse. There is only a weary indifference that will follow me throughout the war.

What's interesting about a person without problems?

On a dog sled team, unless you're the lead dog the view never changes.

The rhythms of nature - the sounds of wind and water, the sounds of birds and insects - must inevitably find their analogues in music.

When I go to places and do book tours, I don't really like doing traditional bookshops. It's nice to walk people through something instead of just standing up in a bookstore.

Who says I can't be free from all of the things that I used to be?

Un-forgiveness is like cancer; it eats you from the inside out.