R. Garcia y Robertson

"We tend to view history not as it was, but as we think it should have been."

"A single truth well-told did the work of a dozen lies."

"Dieter had the true Gypsy contempt for governments, plunging their people into one holocaust after another, calling each new disaster leadership. Or statescraft."

"He took her upstairs to Guido’s big tiled shower. “I will show you the greatest luxury of this century—it almost makes up for the two World Wars.” Turning on the hot water, he sprinkled bath herbs on the tiles. The stall filled with scented steam. Slowly, he undressed her. Kathe’s skin was stark white under the electric light, smelling of excitement and caked with dirt; in the whole time they had been together, Kathe had bathed only once, in the cold waters of the Rhine. He positioned her under the hot cascade from the shower nozzle, her bare hips pressed against the hard warm tiles, her feet braced in the corners of the stall. Dieter scrubbed both their bodies with spiced soap—his hands slid down her breasts and between her legs. Kathe realized that the sixteenth century had a lot to discover about sex and cleanliness."

"“Why are they shooting at us?” The older man stared at her. Kurt answered evenly, “That is what every soldier wants to know—I suppose it is because we are shooting at them.”"

"“This is not possible. Here in America we have democracy.” “Hell, honey,” said the Irish woman, “this ain’t America, this is San Francisco.”"

"He is a Nevada senator, a pimp, and a railroad lawyer; all three professions having much the same qualifications. He is also a saloonkeeper, but no man in Nevada is anything unless he is also a saloonkeeper."

"“Gambling houses stay in business by making it pleasant, even exciting, to lose,” said Aaron. “They treat the loser like a king, providing him with food and drink in a luxurious setting, allowing women of easy virtue to rub up against him. They will ply the loser with every pleasure known to men so he may give up his money and come back when he has more. Most gamblers lose. Not one in twenty has a bank account. Some play poker like assassins, and throw their winnings away on the ponies. Winning takes hard work and strict accounting. Losing is open to all. That is the secret of losing.”"

"Staring into the face of a corpse is sure to make one question where life is headed."

"The king is free to call his greed taxation, and his misdeeds justice."

"A man makes his mark as much by the quality of his enemies as by the quality of his friends."

"Nothing beats going to bed dead and waking up alive."

"“This isn’t fair.” “Hell, no! It’s democracy.”"

"Smack, crack, crank, speed, booze, acid, has, bhang, poppies, and belladonna; none of the above (or all of them taken at once) had even half the addictive power of gaming."

"Ian got up and looked around. Sicker than the stories themselves was the way they were told, full of verve and energy—as if it actually mattered. He hated to hear gamers spilling their guts, trying to sound bad. All it showed was how totally delusional they were. The most elemental rule of gaming was that if you die, you lose—your original stake is gone. You have to give up, or buy your way back in. This tough talk amounted to a bunch of chronic losers bucking themselves up by boasting about how badly they had lost. Somehow he had to win."