“What you are is a question only you can answer.”

“But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?”

“If you can't do what you want, do what you can.”

“Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.”

“We have what we can hold, dear boy, and never let them see you flinch or falter.”

“Identity. That's my elephant. The thought came with certainty, without the question mark on the end this time. Not fame, exactly, though recognition was some kind of important cement for it. But what you were was what you did. And I did more, oh yes. If a hunger for identity were translated into, say, a hunger for food, he'd be a more fantastic glutton than Mark ever dreamed of being. Is it irrational, to want to be so much, to want so hard it hurts? And how much, then, was enough?”

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”