“To be brave, by definition, one has first to be afraid.”

“If you are afraid of wolves, keep out of the woods. - J. V. Stalin, 1936”

“To say she was my girlfriend was absurd: no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend… I suppose I ought to have realize it’s ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.”

“No one can really claim to know politics properly until he has stayed up all night writing a speech for delivery the following day. While the world sleeps, the orator paces by lamplight, wondering what madness ever brought him to this occupation in the first place. Arguments are prepared and discarded. The exhausted mind ceases to have any coherent grip upon the purpose of the enterprise, so that often--usually an hour or two after midnight--there comes a point where failing to turn up, feigning illness, and hiding at home seem the only realistic options. And then, somehow, just asa panic and humiliation beckon, the parts cohere, and there it is: a speech. A second-rate orator now retires gratefully to bed. A Cicero stays up and commits it to memory.”

“In the concealed darkness of the bag her fingers began to work her rosary, clumsily at first but with increasing dexterity - Push. Click. Slide. Press -”

“The natural impulse of men is to follow, he thought, and whoever has the strongest sense of purpose will always dominate the rest.”

“any rash fool can be a hero if he sets no value on his life, or hasn't the wit to appreciate danger. But to understand the risk, perhaps even to flinch at first, but then to summon the strength to face them down - that in my opinion is the most commendable form of valour”