“It is laughable how often good manners interfere with my survival.”

“We often find ourselves at ease with that with which we are most familiar, regardless of whether or not the trait serves us well in the end. Is that not yet another example of how we enslave ourselves?”

“Why must there always be a price to pay for every indulgence, and why must it so often be withdrawn from the bankrupt accounts of the innocent?”

“I don’t care how smart you are. You’ll never understand how little you really know until you’ve had a woman.”

“One has to be at least as ancient as I am now to see that if you try to make sense of life, if you look for patterns and meaning, not only are you bound to be disappointed, you are likely to waste a good deal of precious time.”

“Ignorance is an underrated virtue, my lord.”

“Oh, I take your meaning now, Marcus,” he said, as if comprehension had just dawned. “You would have me harken back to a time when the outcome of a contest was not known until after the voting. How nostalgic.”