Quotes from Robert Masello

Regardless of how black the page, he had always managed to turn it and move on to a new chapter in his life.

People are always doing things for my sake and strangely enough, I'm the one who suffers for it.

the odds are good, but the goods are odd

Keep your voice down!' I warned. 'The house is asleep.' 'Come quick,' he repeated, though in a lower tone. 'And bring gun.' 'Why?

easy thing to be brave and bellicose about it. But if you had, it was hard not to despair. What men could wantonly do to each other, in the name of nation or faith or ideology, was unthinkable.

ROBERT MASELLO is the author of many previous works of fiction and nonfiction, most recently the novels Blood and Ice and The Medusa Amulet. A native of Evanston, Illinois, he studied writing under the novelists Robert Stone and Geoffrey Wolff at Princeton, and has since taught and lectured at many leading universities. For six years, he was the visiting lecturer in literature at Claremont McKenna College. He now lives and works in Santa Monica,

Lucifer — Pride Mammon — Avarice Asmodeus — Lechery Satan — Anger Beelzebub — Gluttony Leviathan — Envy Belphegor — Sloth

If you had never seen war up close, it was an easy thing to be brave and bellicose about it. But if you had, it was hard not to despair. What men could wantonly do to each other, in the name of nation or faith or ideology, was unthinkable.

Could the genizah fragments have been right about so much, but wrong about this? Or was it possible that the tomb had been discovered, and plundered, a thousand years ago? Simone made

I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks.

If these self-anointed leaders did not keep the people aroused with calls to preserve the Revolution, or to defend it from one imaginary foe after another, then the people might shake themselves awake from the trance they were in and begin to question the very men who had drenched their streets in blood and make France pariah among the civilized nations of the world.

I want you to stay with me." "So do I." "Is that what you said in Arabic?" "It was close," she said. He waited for the rest. "It's just an old Bedouin saying." "Give me the rough translation." "I would not trade you for a thousand goats." Lucas laughed.

The mole is a creature that I admire," Gödel said, before listing several of its most salient virtues, ranging from industry to persistence. "And it does not call attention to itself or its work. It works in secret. That, too, is to be admired.

when they're bathed in blood everyday you can't expect them to rise from it stainless the next morning.

The soul," he'd said one night by a campfire in the Valley of the Kings, "is like a falcon. Despite its loyalty to the falconer, it longs to fly free. When my time comes, let my soul soar into the wind and the sky. Wherever its natural home is meant to be, that's where it will go.

Something was in the air tonight, and whatever it might be, it was keeping sleep at bay.

the journal, but with a kind of reverence now that he had not initially felt. He hadn't known at first whose initials they were—RLS—nor had he known who Louis or Fanny were. But then he'd read and deciphered more of the text, put it all together, and discovered that the author of the book was none other than Robert Louis Stevenson. The man whose

the end of earthly existence. The coffin, sealed with four

to catch his breath again, he merely said 'gun', and it was then that I took note of the stain on the drooping folds of the pareu wrapped around his waist. In the moonlight, it had at first appeared to be dirt or perhaps red wine—though the Samoans have no taste for wine—but its crust and gleam now revealed it to be dried blood. A sight that you and I, my friend, know all too well.

Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living. Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886

If there was no God to hear it, what difference did it make? But if there was . . .

The natural world was a tightly integrated web, and every time humans messed with it, there were as many unintended consequences as there were intentional. But that was a lesson nobody ever seemed to learn. Maybe

I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in

Am I going to die?" "No trainee of mine has ever died." "How many have you had?" "You're the first." It