“Nothing can stop a lie whose fashion has come...”

“Too much truth in the hands of a liar is more dangerous than a world of lies told to the truthful”

“in the absence of real power blood seemed the only alternative.though he could walk away, and had to walk away, he could not walk away with impunity. he could never be a mordantly amused or merely interested observer of the beast.”

“And so tonight we're going to make the lie true, and when that's done, I'll bring the liquor back here and we'll get drunk together, here, tonight, in this place that death has come into...”

“Young people," McDonald said contemptuously. "You always think there's something to find out.""Yes, sir," Andrews said."Well, there's nothing," McDonald said. "You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you — that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you're the only one that knows the secret; only then it's too late. You're too old.""No," Andrews said. A vague terror crept from the darkness that surrounded them, and tightened his voice. "That's not the way it is.""You ain't learned, then," McDonald said. "You ain't learned yet. . . .”

“Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.”

“Qui jacet in terra non habet unde cadat. In me consumpsit vires fortuna nocendo, Nil superest ut iam possit obesse magis." (loosely translated: "He who lies on the ground can fall no farther. In me, Fortune has exhausted her power of hurting; nothing remains that can harm me anymore.")”