Who was more conscious than the soldier of capricious fortune, of the random roll of the dice?

How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so?

The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.

Couples tended to be of roughly equivalent personal attractiveness, though of course factors such as money often seemed to secure a partner of significantly better looks than oneself.

She wuz depressed. Yeah, she wuz on stuff for it. Like me. Sometimes it jus' takes you over. It's an illness, " she said, although she made the words sound like "it's uh nill

Hers was the kind of family that commissioned painters to immortalize its young: a background utterly alien to Strike, and one he had come to know like a dangerous foreign country.

In spite of her plainness that would have made wallflowers of other women, she radiated a great sense of self-importance.

You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing, Strike

Ridiculous, " he said breathlessly. "You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing.

In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted

Because what's perplexing is not that you and I encounter suffering in this life

It won't take me a minute to kill you. - Felix

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this.

It has been proved that the land can exist without the country - and be better for it; it has not been proved ... that the country can exist without the land.

How much would you pay to avoid a second Depression?

I don’t do ordinary work. That is not me in the least.

Unless a person has trained himself for his chance, the chance will only make him ridiculous. A great occasion is worth to man exactly what his preparation enables him to make of it.

Electricity, the peril the wind sings to in the wires on a gray day.

I don't want to give a cool appraisal of Jeremy Irons. I just want to boil him in oil.

Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.