“By virtue of its unbounded aggression, Roman imperialism was ultimately responsible for its own destruction.”

“Shakespeare's ambiguous lubricity in Venus is less disturbing than the bleakly moral emphasis of Lucrece, where virtue is so low-spirited, its exclamation so lachrymose and its justification the nasty realpolitik of Roman Republicanism. The sun has not dried the dew on the grass in Venus, but the ill-lit world of Livy's Rome darkens Lucrece. The first poem lives out of doors; the second is in a permanent chiaroscuro.”

“Each man follows his own path - his own destiny, if you will. And only he is responsible for the choice.”

“Don't interfere!" The Doctor silenced her angrily. "I cannot will my own destruction.”

“Love isn't always clean and pretty--sometimes it's messy, cruel, and confusing. And sometimes, it doesn't turn out the way you want it to. But then, the beauty of love is that it's very strong, and when it's real, it's worth it.”

“When I thought about it, though, what I liked best about the session was that Helder said fuck. A good, hard word, a word with a life of its own, a fearless word. A rent in the dry elegance. Fuck.”

“Sometimes, when the sun is shining, it's daytime,"Robert snapped."And sometimes, when it's dark, it's because there's an eclispe,"Leslie snapped back.”