"Brilliance cannot improvise on faulty data."

"Cigars were for talk; pipes for reflection."

"But scouts, he told himself firmly, must observe what is, not what they wish to see."

"What the prisoner said made some sense. He could see how technological progress—and social change with it—was coupled…"

"He believed because he wanted to believe. And that, too, is madness."

"This was an omen for sure, but one with no obvious meaning."

"If people don’t leave a hole in your life when they are gone, Consuela, they were never in your life at all."

"No field of knowledge is so transparently simple as another’s."

"You have a grim taste in miracles, my friend."

"The stories I have to tell are not for the ears of youngsters. What were the stories, really? A crowd of men charged …"