“The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes.”

“In hatred is love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.”

“The school discussed friendship often. It is, they learned, one of the things man can least afford to lack; necessary to the good life, and beautiful in itself. Between friends is no need of justice, for neither wrong nor inequality can exist... Friendship is perfect when virtuous men love the good in one another; for virtue gives more delight than beauty, and is untouched by time.”

“You mustn't get so upset about what you feel, Spud. No one's a hundred per cent consistent all the time. We might like to be. We can plan our lives along certain lines. But you know, there's no future in screwing down all the pressure valves and smashing in the gauge. You can do it for a bit and then something goes. Sometimes it gets that the only thing is just to say, 'That's what I'd like to feel twenty-four hours a day; but, the hell with it, this is how I feel now.”

“I was a king and a king's heir and now I am a slave.”

“There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.”

“One might have supposed that the true act of love was to lie together and talk.”