“Killing depends on circumstances, as you'd expect, whether it's a cold, planned murder, or a hot death in a fight, or inspired by honor or a more shameful motive. However many times you kill, though, it's the first that matters. It's a man's first blood that banishes him from the world of the ordinary.”

“It doesn't matter how many they kill," I told him. "And it's not awesome-it's wrong.""Then why do you talk about them all the time?" asked Max."Because wrong is interesting.”

“An assassin's first murder is himself. He kills the man he was.”

“Everyone is a potential murderer-in everyone there arises from time to time the wish to kill-though not the will to kill.”

“Our problem is one of spirituality. If a man comes to speak to me about the reforms to be undertaken in the Muslim world, about political strategies and of great geo-strategic plans, my first question to him would be whether he performed the dawn prayer in its time.”

“The explanation of evil is a hell of a lot more disappointing than that. It's blunders, people making blunders, whether it's raiding a village and killing all the inhabitants, or killing a child in a fit of rage. Mistakes. Everything is simply a matter of mistakes.”