"It is always impossible—he was conscious again with that strange clarity of mind—for a man to face his own death honestly. A man always continues to believe to the last moment of his life that something will intervene to save him."

“Jade and men are both shaped by harsh tools; be not unaware of sudden changes of fortune.”

“You can’t play the role of thug all over the galaxy and not store up in the subconscious a fine line of private fears and remembered enemies.”

“Well, we don't know a lot, and most people don't want to learn more’n what's right before their eyes. You point out things that don’t fit into what they've always accepted, and they say it’s all your imagination and nothing like that is real.”

“And life in a continual state of apprehension was no life at all.”

“There was a saying of the peasants—the rat cannot call the cat to account. But it was also true that if the moon moves but slowly, still it crosses the city.”

“From a gabled roof the rolling melon has two choices of descent, though both lead to disaster.”