“If you can look at one of these waves and you don't believe that there's something greater than we are, then you've got some serious analyzing to do and you should go sit under a tree for a very long time.”

“Ye wanna steer clear o' 'im and 'is little friends. Ye shall come to a nasty end nosin' 'bout that gent."The Spy knew the refrain. He wondered aloud as to the nature of these little friends."Ain't ever seen 'em, just 'eard of 'em. Cripples and deformed ones. Some ain't got no arms or legs is what I 'ear. they crawl along behind 'im, see? Wrigglin' in the dirt all ruddy worm-like.""He's got an entourage of folk without arms," the Spy said, raising his brows toward the brim of his cocked hat. "Or legs. Following him wherever he goes.""Some got arms, some don't. Some got legs, some don't. Some got neither. That's what I 'ear." The farmer shrugged, made the sign of warding again, and would say no more on the matter.”

“That really your kind of crowd? These effete psychos who want to relive the seedier aspects of the Roman empire?These are the kind of folks who own tropical islands. Hell, some of them run banana republics for fun. They want a spectacle, I can fill the bill.Ah yes. Dictators, inbred nobility and other megalomaniacs. Swell friends you got there.It's a living.”

“There's a distinction between telling death reinforce the meaning of life and "living every day as if it were your last." No one can really live that way with out getting locked up. We cannot realistically approach each day as if it were our last. What would you do if you found out you were going to die at the end of this day? Would you do into work? Would you sit and pray_ Would you run around in a panic trying to get out last batch of letters or e-mails? Giving stuff away? I don't know exactly what any of us would do under such circumstances, but it's my guess that it would not feel too comfortable. It would make me feel utterly dejected. I wouldn't know where to turn first.”

“Most people can swim a narrow river. Water is an alien element, but with labor we can force ourselves through it. A good swimmer can cross a wide river, a lake, even the English Channel; no one, as far as we know, has ever swum the Atlantic Ocean, or is likely to do so. Even a champion swimmer, if he had business which required to spend alternate weeks in Paris and London, would not make the trip regularly by swimming the English Channel. Although we can force ourselves through water by skill and main strength, for all practical purposes our ability to traverse water is only as good as our ships or our airplanes. And so with the activities of our brains. Thinking is probably as foreign to human nature as is water; it is an unnatural element into which we throw ourselves with hesitation, and in which we flounder once we are there. We have learned, during the millenniums, to do rather well with thinking, but only if we buoy ourselves up with words. Some thinking of a simple sort we can do without words, but difficult and sustained thinking, presumably, is completely impossible without their aid, as traversing the Atlantic Ocean is presumably impossible without instruments or submarine transportation.”

“I’d learned a long time ago that you can’t prove a negative. You can prove that you did something, but it’s the devil to prove you didn’t do something.”

“an English girl might well believethat time is how you spend your love.”