“If he were any other man, I might have suspected him of substance abuse, of being coked up or something. But Barrons was too much a purist for that; his drugs were money, power, and control”

“It is a great error to be superior to others....It is such pride as this that makes a man appear a fool, makes him abused by others, and invites disaster. A man who is truly versed in any art will of his own accord be clearly aware of his own deficiency; and therefore, his ambition being never satisfied, he ends by never being proud.”

“OK, some people might think he's a degenerate, troublesome, drug dealing, coke dependant, alcoholic, but that doesn't make him a bad person.”

“Watching those guys pummel each other so no one would suspect them of being weak was too much for me. Their reputations were more important than their faces.”

“If it were Hegel, I might suspect it means nothing. But Goethe means something, always.”

“People are the biggest drug addiction in the world, and I mean that quite literally. Take any single substance abuse problem in the world, and it's dwarfed in comparison to the addiction to feelings and people.”