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Democracy in crime was turning out no different from democracies everywhere: a sublime idea in theory, soiled by the reality that deep down nobody really believes that all men are created equal.

And now everyone returning from an armed conflict is called a hero too. In the old days you had to commit specific acts of valor during war; now you just need to turn up. These days when a war is on, heroism seems to mean 'attendance.'

I had only a splinter of awareness back then that no matter what anybody says, choosing between the available options is not the same as thinking for yourself. The only true way of thinking for yourself is to create options of your own, options that don't exist.

Even ugly people know beauty when they don't see it.

You experience life alone, you can be as intimate with another as much as you like, but there has to be always a part of you and your existence that is incommunicable; you die alone, the experience is yours alone, you might have a dozen spectators who love you, but your isolation, from birth to death, is never fully penetrated. What if death is the same aloneness, though, for eternity? An incommunicable, cruel, and infinite loneliness. We don't know what death is. Maybe it's that.

But what argument could I offer? It was nothing but an irrational feeling—the kind of “premonition” we get from time to time but remember only on the rare occasions when it is fulfilled by the event. I had no evidence.

When people think your days are numbered, they're really very nice to you. It's only when you're trying to get on in the world that they bring their claws out.

Pride is the first thing you need to do away with in life. It's there to make you feel good about yourself. It's like putting a suit on a shriveled carrot and taking it out to the theater and pretending it's someone important. The first step in self-liberation is to be free of self-respect. I understand why it's useful for some. When people have nothing, they can still have their pride. That's why the poor were given the myth of nobility, because the cupboards were bare. Are you listening to me? This is important, Jasper. I don't want you to have anything to do with nobility, pride, or self-respect. They're tools to help you bronze your own head.

I fear me that the eighteenth century, which I have idealized all these years, never really existed. The real one was far dirtier, more narrow-minded, brutal, orthodox, and superstitious than I could have ever conceived without seeing it.

I passed that off as women’s intuition, which is wrong more often than not. People remember the times it works and forget those it fails.

Let's not beat around the bush: human feelings can be ridiculous. Thinking back to that moment, to how I felt at the realization that my stepfather was slowly murdering me, I did not feel anger. I did not feel outrage. I felt hurt. That's right. That this man who I'd lived with my whole life, the man who married my mother and was for all practical purposes my father, was maliciously poisoning me to death hurt my feelings. Ridiculous!

I'd learned a valuable lesson: people almost never look up. Who knows why? Maybe they're looking at the soil for a preview of coming attractions. And so they should. I think anyone who says he looks to the future and doesn't have one eye on the dirt is being short-sighted.