One likes to think one grows as a writer as one ages, else all you get is an 'old' young writer. Beyond that is the changing landscape of the universe and the stories I choose to tell.

Writing is hard work; it's also the best job I've ever had.

He likes to humble our foes by making them seem ridiculous. As he said to me the other day, ‘Kill a man, and you cede him honor in the eyes of the gods. Laugh at him and you shame him’.

My father used to say, “a day spent breathing is a good day.

Father used to say that, among man’s strange undertakings, war stood clearly forth as the strangest.

When you lose everything,’ Nathan had said, ’you’ve nothing left to lose. You’ve got two choices then: either kill yourself or start building a new life. When I started this new life, without my family, I decided the only sensible thing in it was to live for the small rewards: a job well done, a beautiful sunrise, the sound of children laughing at play, a good cup of wine. Makes it easy to deal with the harsher side of life.

Chumaka ended with a quotation from a play that Jiro favored. “ ‘Small acts partner small houses and small minds’.

Well, he thought, dwelling on past failures once you’d learned all there was to learn was just heaping futility on failure.

One time is much like another to death. She comes when she will. So why give over your mind to worry?

People will often do imponderable things because of how they feel, not because of what they think.