He wore the memory of her embrace like armor, and though he knew it would not save his life, it would be all that was left to him to ease his passage into whatever lay...

purchased” at someone else’s expense.

They say in moments of great fear or desperation, a man will always make a choice—either to flee or face his enemy, but choice requires thought, and in the moment when you know for certain...

if only’s” leading from one self-inflicted bungle to the next until at some point, one’s final iteration of the excuse became one’s final utterance, and one expired.

I don’t care how smart you are. You’ll never understand how little you really know until you’ve had a woman.

Some men simply refuse to appear insulted. But then, having felt the sting from the slap on their cheek, know just where to slip the knife, their smile never fading.

Illicit sex, Marcus, drives at least half the decisions of the modern world, wouldn’t you agree?

Ignorance is an underrated virtue, my lord.

It is we who move through time, not the reverse. When we walk beyond any one of life’s instants, it becomes nothing more than a receding milestone. We can look back, but we cannot retrace...

Children—their untroubled, idyllic vision of the future is almost always shattered. Sooner or later they learn what all youth must—that life is the cruel fate that awaits them while they make plans for a tomorrow...

It is a terrible thing to witness death by violence, a thousand times worse to hold a man’s life in your own hands and to willingly, consciously take it from him. Acknowledged or not, something...

The past is set down in a thousand thousand indelible scrolls. But the future is a blank parchment forever in wait of a present.

It is laughable how often good manners interfere with my survival.

Strange, is it not, how even those of us who scoff at divine intervention will fall to our knees and clasp our hands the moment we realize our futures are defined by uncertainty and hazard....

I think about that centurion from time to time and wonder, had he retired to a farm in Campagna, happy with his harvest of grapes and grandchildren, or had he fallen amongst his comrades on...

Since my arrival in Rome, I have had many opportunities to wonder if compassion’s opposite is cruelty, or to reflect whether or not indifference would serve as a better black to its white.

I advise, however, moderation in this task of setting goals, or else risk becoming tangled up in a Gordian knot of life’s many disappointments.

Why can’t I remember that not once have I ever seen a coin, whether grimy copper or bright gold, that had but one side.

You would have me harken back to a time when the outcome of a contest was not known until after the voting. How nostalgic.

One has to be at least as ancient as I am now to see that if you try to make sense of life, if you look for patterns and meaning, not only are you bound...

There is no such thing as unrequited love; the phrase ought to be stricken from the lexicon. Love is a thing shared, an intertwining of essential separateness into something not quite alone. There is nothing...

We would soon be on our way to war, where mercy is unwise and kindness has no place.

Oh, the unintended consequences of perfidy!

Yes, I have a romantic nature; it is a character flaw which should be viewed with pity, not derision.