“If man could apply half the ingenuity he’s exhibited in the creation of weapons to more sensible ends, there’s no limit to what he might yet accomplish”

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body. But rather, to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up,totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming .... WOW what a ride.”

“.....the light you possess will burn to the great benefit of this world long after our poor footprints have been washed from the sand.”

“It's a dungeon, Leila. They're Supposed to smell."Mission accomplished. The stench might have actually killed my new appetite. If hell could fart, it would smell like this.”

“War strips away the thin veneer applied slap-dash by the institutions of society and shows Man for exactly what he is.”

“You might be the cruelest person I’ve ever met,” he said in a conversational tone.“What?” I gasped.“My first wife killed herself. Took me centuries to get over it and love again, yet you weren’t going to mention that you might be compelled to slay yourself in front of me.”

“He knew very well that love could be like the most beautiful singing, that it could make death inconsequential, that it existed in forms so pure and strong that it was capable of reordering the universe. He knew this, and that he lacked it, and yet as he stood in the courtyard of the Palazzo Venezia, watching diplomats file quietly out the gate, he was content, for he suspected that to command the profoundest love might in the end be far less beautiful a thing than to suffer its absence.”