"But the fact is I don’t care. I haven’t cared since I came here, and I will continue not to care until I leave. With as much of Ambergris smoldering behind me as I can manage."

"It looked like lively abstract art. Symbols in search of context."

"Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?"

"Strange, but when he closed his eyes he had an image of the hotel above them restored to its former grandeur. A concierge and porter in the lobby. Someone behind the desk waiting to take his key. Sintra in an evening gown. They’d be about to take a motored vehicle to the opera. The streets would be busy with merchants and people coming home from work. The buildings, the storefronts, would be bright and cheery with lights. Like it had been in those mayfly beautiful moments between wars, before the Rising."

"Maybe once, early on, he had convinced himself he could do some good, sometimes even imagined he was a mole, getting close so he could strike a blow. Imagined he was in it to defend Ambergris from the enemies that surrounded it. Imagined he was protecting ordinary citizens. But the truth was he’d been tired, had stopped caring. Broken down from too much fighting, too many things connected to his past. And when that spark, that impulse, had returned, it was too late: he was trapped."

"I could not move or speak for several minutes, frozen in the belief that the book itself had changed and was now writing me."

"Unlike the Cult of the Seven-Edged Star, the Church of the Seven Pointed Star believed that God had seven points rather than seven edges. Therefore, rather than worshipping the journey toward self-realization symbolized by the edges, they worshipped the goals of self-realization as symbolized by the points. [...] Adherents to the Church of the Seven-pointed Star used swords with sharp points but no edge, while the Cult of the Seven-Edged Star used swords with sharp edges but no point. Alas, edges proved superior to points in most battles fought in the streets of Nicea. Caroline's followers were forced to either commit sacrilege and switch to edges, or become meals for the ever-present saltwater buzzard. Proving, one could say, the point of the edges."

"It closely resembles the situation that exists within a mental institution: in tight quarters, in similar garb, dissimilar minds attempt to build a consensus reality that, with a monumental effort of empathy, cannot—can never!—take concrete form."

"A fresh river in a beautiful meadow Imagined in his mind The good Painter, who would some day paint it"

"It is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born?"

"When they give you things, ask yourself why. When you're grateful to them for giving you the things you should have anyway, ask yourself why."

"The city might be savage, stray dogs might share the streets with grimy urchins whose blank eyes reflected the knowledge that they might soon be covered over, blinded forever, by the same two pennies just begged from some gentleman, and no one in the fuming, fulminous boulevards of trade might know who actually ran Ambergris—or, if anyone ran it at all, but, like a renegade clock, it ran on and wound itself heedless, empowered by the insane weight of its own inertia, the weight of its own citizenry."

"An inordinate love of ritual can be harmful to the soul, unless, of course, in times of great crisis, when ritual can protect the soul from fracture."

"Today, don’t play it safe, play it smart."

"You can only learn so much by reading. You cannot learn to ride a bicycle by reading a book."

"It’s what is in your head that determines what is in your hands. Money is only an idea."

"Today, we need greater financial intelligence to simply survive."

"Education and wisdom about money are important. Start early. Buy a book. Go to a seminar. Practice. Start small."

"Action always beats inaction."

"Finding a good deal, the right business, the right people, the right investors, or whatever is just like dating. You must go to the market and talk to a lot of people, make a lot of offers, counteroffers, negotiate, reject and accept."

"I told him that his profit is made when you buy, not when you sell."

"Moral of the story: Make offers."

"Most sellers ask too much."

"Small thinkers don’t get the big breaks. If you want to get richer, think bigger first."

"Copying or emulating heroes is true power learning."

"Poor people are more greedy than rich people"

"To be the master of money, you need to be smarter than it. Then money will do as it is told. It will obey you. Instead of being a slave to it, you will be the master of it. That is financial intelligence."

"Due to external temptations, it is much easier in today’s consumer world to simply blow it out the expense column."

"Too often today, we focus to borrowing money to get the things we want instead of focusing on creating money."

"It is true that your world is only a mirror of you."

"For while the process of developing cash flow from an asset column in theory is easy, it is the mental fortitude of directing money that is hard."

"So I pay myself first, invest the money, and let the creditors yell."

"I know that sounds tough, but as I said, if you’re not tough inside, the world will always push you around anyway."

"The power of self-discipline. If you cannot get control of yourself, do not try to get rich."

"All you need to be is generous with what you have, and the powers will be generous with you."

"Listening is more important than talking."

"I would say that one of the hardest things about wealth building is to be true to yourself and be willing to not go along with the crowd."

"True, I have lost money on many occasions. But I only play with money I can afford to lose."

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result."

"It’s just like riding a bike. After a little wobbling, it’s a piece of cake. But when it comes to money, it’s the determination to get through the wobbling that’s a personal thing."

"I do it for myself and the people I love. It’s love that gets me over the hurdles and sacrifices."

"A truly intelligent person welcomes new ideas, for new ideas can add to the synergy of other accumulated ideas."

"I have found that many people use arrogance to try to hide their own ignorance."

"How can I afford to never work again?"

"Eleanor Roosevelt said it best: “Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”"

"Cynics criticize, and winners analyze"

"Doubt is expensive."

"As I said, getting out of the rat race is technically easy. It doesn’t take much education, but those doubts are cripplers for most people."

"If you look at anyone successful, at the start they were not balanced. Balanced people go nowhere. They stay in one spot. To make progress, you must first go unbalanced. Just look at how you make progress walking. Thomas Edison was not balanced. He was focused. Bill Gates was not balanced. He was focused. Donald Trump is focused. George Soros is focused. George Patton did not take his tanks wide. He focused them and blew through the weak spots in the German line. The French went wide with the Maginot Line, and you know what happened to them. If you have any desire of being rich, you must focus."

"The net result: I still have the old way I used to think, and I have Peter’s[Lynch] way of looking at the same problem or situation."