“It must be remembered that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed as epic tales and not as historical texts. To use Shakespeare's Macbeth as a source for 11th-century Scottish politics would rather miss the point of the play, and the same is true of the Homeric epics.”

“...The first dictionaries were glossaries of Homeric words, intended to help Romans read the Iliad and Odyssey as well as other Greek literature employing the 'archaic' Homeric vocabulary.”

“The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.”

“And if they don't like it if you use those words and they stop moving put their hand on your mouth say "Don't say thatdon't use that wordI don't like it " if they say they don't want to try being handcuffed to the towel rack in the bathroom they're never any good in bed. They may be nice. They may be witty charming etc. etc. They may be doing something for women's liberation (over what? over whom?). But they're never any good in bed.”

“Remember live each day, as though it were your last, the mark you leave, your legacy, can't change once you have passed.”

“Like the monks chanting their Pali mantras, learning by rote was the accepted method of education just as in English schools of the time. ‘In geography,’ Sokheang recalled, ‘we would have to learn the size of a country, the population, the agricultural produce, etcetera. And we would get called up to recite it to the rest of the class.’ The accuracy of this recitation was the measure of a successful student. ‘Knowledge,’ said Sokheang, ‘was the storage of facts.”

“I don't want you to worry about protecting my feelings or your father's or anybody's. When you were little you always tried to make everyone ahppy. Then it was like one day you just exploded.”