“He was the cleanest-cut comic-book schoolboy hero imaginable.”

“Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.”

“Remember, it's the winners write the history books, and the losers get the leavings.”

“A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.”

“There was a quote he could not quite remember, something about the past being an island surrounded by time. He had missed the last boat to the island.”

“He drank, for the same reason he wrote second-rate science fiction. Not to forget but to remember, to open the past and find himself there again. He opened each bottle, began each story with the secret conviction that here was the magic drought that would restore him. But magic, like wine, needs the right conditions in order to work.”

“he is the kind of man who breakes biscuits in two and saves the other half for later”