The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in itsvalue.
It took something devastating for me to figure out what I had right in front of me.
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
Through his brain was running a phrase of the mad philosopher "the transvaluation of values". In truth, he was less interested in staking a fortune than in beating Shorty. After all, he concluded, it wasn't the reward of the game but the playing of it that counted. Mind, and muscle, and stamina, and soul, were challenged in a contest with this Shorty, a man who had never opened the books, and who did not know grand opera from rag-time, nor an epic from a chilblain.
You are my precious thing, as long as you remain beneath me.
— So, isn't the President jumping on your bandwagon?
— What he did was light the bandwagon on fire. Because he knows what I know... that American families are not prepared to put their daughters in harm's way.
— You don't know that.
— In face, I do: Roper, Harris, Gallop — they all come back the same.
— What are you saying? That a women's life is more valuable than a man's? That a women's death hurts a family more?
— I'm saying it's not going to happen. Not when the President is set to turn this into a third-rail issue should I choose to even campaign against him.
<...>
— Can you honestly tell me you wanted that life? Squat-pissing in some third-world jungle with...
— I wanted the choice.
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