“difference is trampled under foot and conformity is elevated to a virtue”

“If we run the curricula race of the safe, the cursus honorum of the domesticated cattle of modernity, we learn nothing but our own ignorance andour prize is the death of the imagination in the cremation of our hopes.”

“Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.”

“He was Instructor Reno Alberto, a five-foot-six man-mountain of fitness, discipline, and intelligence. He was ruthless, cruel, unrelenting taskmaster.”

“A guy like Franz could talk smack all day about my Afro, my lack of brains, my mother, her alleged lack of virtue.”

“The difference between a pebble and a mountain lies in whom you ask to move it.”

“Machineries of reason, machineries of conduct, machineries of virtue. The machine that regulates instinct, keeps one’s hands free of another man’s throat, free of one’s own. These machines have all, as someone said, gone too long in the elements. Gummed now, rusted, bloodless.I forget who said it and I no longer care.”