"When Victoria told me how intensely she hated me, I kept the Beretta aimed at her face, but heard myself say, 'I don't hate you.'She called me an effing liar and said, 'Hate makes the world go around. Envy, lust and hate.'I stopped hating anyone the day when I realized hating can't restore to me anything that's lost."

"I was like you once, long time ago. I believed in the dignity of man. Decency. Humanity. But I was lucky. I found out the truth early, boy. And what is the truth, Stark? It's all very simple. There's no such thing as the dignity of man. Man is a base, pathetic and vulgar animal."

"As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter..."

"Words have power, my son. Words can cut to the heart and soothe the deepest hurts. They can be puzzles that leave another pondering for days. I prefer to cast my spells of words in ways that make others think. It is a fault, I fear, that has come with age."

"What a tremendous sin impatience is, he thinks. It blinds us to the moment before us, and it is only when that moment has passed that we look back, and see it was full of treasures."