"I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked awful, but I always look awful in the mirror. I keep myself going with the firm belief that my real face is much better looking."

"You bought the girls drinks and you stared at their perfect bodies and you pretended that they liked you. And they pretended that they liked you, too. When you stopped spending money, they got up and pretended that they liked someone else."

"“She cost you more.” “I know,” said the trick. “How much?” “You tell me,” she said, thinking he might be a cop setting her up. That kind of thing still happened whenever the religious authorities ran out of infidels to persecute."

"The most frequent expression in the Muslim world is inshallah, if God wills. It removes all guilt: blame it on Allah. If the oasis dries up and blows away, it was Allah’s will. If you get caught sleeping with your brother’s wife, it was Allah’s will. Getting your hand or your cock or your head chopped off in reprisal is Allah’s will, too. Nothing much gets done in the Budayeen without discussing how Allah is going to feel about it."

"That was the evil of Dr. Bertram Waters: the perpetuation of hopeless dreams, compounded by the betrayal of those dreams to make his own a reality."

"The night is this city’s single resource. Well, that and disease."

"With people, Moore suspected, no matter how noble the intent, a defect was unavoidable, a taint of politics."

"I was no more eccentric than your average raving loon."

"“The universe doesn’t have secrets,” I said cynically, “only lies and swindles.”"

"In many ways, Islam is a beautiful and elegant faith; but it is the nature of religions to put a higher premium on your proper attention to ritual than on your convenience."

"“I think you should know that I’m a devout Christian.” I took that to mean that my new servant wholeheartedly disapproved of almost everything I might say or do."

"She gave me a wide-eyed, innocent smile that looked as out of place on her as it would have on a desert scorpion."

"The butler recognized me, even favoring me with a minute change in his expression. Evidently I had become a celebrity. Politicians and sex stars may cuddle up to you and it doesn’t prove a thing, but when the butlers of the world notice you, you realize that some of what you believe about yourself is true."

"I liked being the screwer rather than the screwee."

"I looked good, faster than light with a little money in my pocket. You know what I mean. I was the same as always: the clothes looked first-rate. That was fine, because most people only look at the clothes, anyway."

"The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them."

"I shook my head ruefully. Police departments all over the world were identical in two respects: they all have a fondness for breaking your head open for little or no provocation, and they can’t see the simple truth if it’s lying in front of them naked with its legs spread. The police don’t enforce laws; they don’t even get busy until after the laws are broken. They solve crimes at a pitifully low rate of success. What the police are, to be honest, is a kind of secretarial pool that records the names of the victims and the statements of the witnesses. After enough time passes, they can safely shove this information to the back of the filing system to make room for more."

"People who live their lives by proverbs waste their time doing lots of stupid things. “Getting even is the best revenge” is my motto."

"“We have now successfully enlisted the aid of many groups of theoretically anti-communist people, all supporting those very causes which lead directly to victory for the Party. These students will be of great value in creating political upheaval here in the next few years. Though they may not vote themselves, they will do a great part of the work for the candidates we shall endorse.” “I think it was the vague promise of sexual freedom that did it,” said Weintraub wryly. “That seems to work on everybody. Even the clergy.”"

"The information I got from one person often contradicted the version I heard from another, so I’d long ago gotten into the habit of trying to hear as many different stories as I could and averaging them all out. The truth was in there somewhere, I knew it; the problem was coaxing it into the open."

"“What do you know about the activities of the brain and the nervous system?” I laughed. “About as much as any hustler from the Budayeen who can barely read and write his name. I know that the brain is in the head, I’ve heard that it’s a bad idea to let some thug spill it on the sidewalk. Beyond that, I don’t know much.” I did, truthfully, know some more, but I always hold something in reserve. It’s a good policy to be a little quicker, a little stronger, and a little smarter than everybody thinks you are."

"I told you it was dirty. When you wander into the highest level of international affairs, it’s almost always dirty."

"Marriage was something I thought happened only to other people, like fatal traffic accidents."

"“Nyxnissa?” She looked back at the queen. “There are no happy endings, Nyxnissa.” “I know,” Nyx said. “Life keeps going.”"

"It wasn’t what was done to you. Life was what you did with what was done to you."

"“We have a war to fight. You don’t understand. We fight in God’s name.” “I understand just fine,” Nyx said."

"Don’t confuse rescue and kidnapping. I have not asked to be rescued."

"I’d say I was doing a great job submitting to God by submitting to my desires. Who do you think gave me desire in the first place?"

"Countries at war lived in a state of perpetual fear."

"The world could burn around her, the cities turn to dust, the cries of a hundred thousand fill the air, and she would get up after the fire died and walk barefoot and burned over the charred soil in search of clean water, a weapon, a purpose. She would rebuild."

"You could stand near him, listen to him speak, and feel as if you were in the presence of some wiser man, a true mullah. His uncles were the same. Rich, powerful men whose influence allowed them to profit from the war, not fight in it."

"She had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn’t make any difference."

"A well-appointed prison is still a prison."

"Not everything that’s beautiful is weak."

"“How can you read such a beautiful book and turn your back on it?” “Never said it wasn’t a beautiful book. I just don’t believe there’s some man up there in the black who gets off on watching us pound our head on the pavement six times a day."

"Suppose Sisyphus to have been acquitted his need of forever toiling up his hill in Hell, would he have made the last journey in joy? Or would mere fatigue have extinguished all other emotion, as a torch extinguished in a sconce?"

"It was a distinction without a difference."

"It was but that, seeing him and so imagining that something about him was otherwise, automatically they feared him."

"It’s not a matter of who runs first or who runs last. It’s merely a matter of who gets caught."

"Seven cities claimed blind Homer, dead, Through which blind Homer, living, begged his bread."

"Clearly this was no time to ask if they should first define their terms. Nor, for that matter, had Socrates had to define the bowl of hemlock."

"It is not a very interesting night market, anyway. No wonderful things are sold there, though often one wonders, next day, how one could have bought them..."

"It had not been precisely a fruitful meeting, but it had been a long one."

"Though you expel Nature with a pitchfork, she will always return."

"And then in that, admittedly magnificent, abrupt moment you saw what I concede without argument was the face of rather an attractive wench, and—Zeus! you weren’t thinking, man—you were simply reacting. It wasn’t your heart, it was your codpiece that the impulse came from!"

"Everything meant something, still, some meanings were revealed sooner than others. And that some were seemingly never revealed in no way disproved the fact."

"She spun, as a matter of form and status alone, her woollen yarn and her oft-breaking thread. What else did she spin? he wondered. And the answer, not spoken aloud, was, a web. And one that now seemed sure to hold him fast. To hold him fast indeed."

"These precautions, perhaps because they had been taken, proved unnecessary."

"“There may be someone here who knows less about all this than I do,” Clemens said, “but I can’t imagine who.”"