"The whole business lay ringed with mystery, with improbabilities, but also with certainty of total destruction if we failed. There might be total destruction if we succeeded, but that was someone else’s problem. We could only set the standard, write our last will and testament through action, and hope someone could still read deeply enough to raise arms against the encroaching night."

“I watched the flickers, thought of modern times, and it came to me that we’ve never stopped fighting. When our wars ceased, a rearguard action began. We fought against deterioration of order; and lost as an old culture died and society went crazy at the funeral. Yammer got crowned King, with chatter its Queen.”

“So what use are we? Burnside hopes to die exhausted in a cathouse, with the sweet-sweet taste of bourbon on his tongue. My own ambition is less raunchy. I want, at age ninety, to be gunned down while storming the Congress.”

“The world was changing, and it wouldn’t change back.”

““The rules would seem to indicate,” I told him, “that if you start a war you really can’t complain when people drop bombs on you.”

“The crotch and the brain are the engines of history.”

“A lot of preachers will be glad this man is gone, and that’s one good thing you can say for him. He drove nice people crazy. This man was a hellion, pure and simple; but what folks don’t understand is, hellions have their place. They put everything on the line over nothing very much. Most guys worry so much about dying, they never do any living. Jesse was so alive with living, he never gave dying any thought.”