Weak emperors mean strong viceroys.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right.

The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity—a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.