“My state of mind, and all accompanying circumstances, were just now such as most to favour the adoption of a new, resolute, and daring— perhaps desperate— line of action. I had nothing to lose.”

“The conquest of the land of Canaan was accompanied with so many wonderful and so many bloody circumstances, that the victorious Jews were left in a state of irreconcilable hostility with all their neighbours.”

“It was a completely new feeling for me–like someone had just released a million, tiny butterflies loose in my stomach, and they were feverishly flying up into my head and making me lose my mind.”

“Perhaps loneliness had nothing to do with place or circumstance; perhaps it was in you; yourself. Perhaps, wherever you were, you took your little circle of loneliness with you...”

“There, he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.”

“I swim with all my strength. No superhuman surge, or pony heroics; it's just me at my most desperate.”