"Luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.” Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. The Art Of War

When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong. The Critic as Artist

What is love? For the rabble love is a kind of variety, a transient vulgarity; the rabble's conception of love is best found in their obscene ditties, in prostitution and in the foul idioms they use when they are halfway sober, such as "shoving the donkey's foreleg in mud," or "putting dust on the head." My love for her, however, was of a totally different kind. I knew her from ancient times—strange slanted eyes, a narrow, half-open mouth, a subdued quiet voice. She was the embodiment of all my distant, painful memories among which I sought what I was deprived of, what belonged to me but somehow I was denied. Was I deprived forever? The Blind Owl