“He could not play the game without hope; could not play the game without a dream. They had taken it all away from him now, they had turned away from him and there was nothing for him now… He was alone and there was nothing for him.”

“The time, then, had come for him to poison himself so that an economic monopoly could be kept alive, a sprawling, interplan empire from which he now derived nothing.”

“Maybe you should go home and rest," Simon told Meg. Maybe he could go home with her and they could cuddle for a while or play a game. Or she could watch a movie with him and pet him.”

“He was true soldier without a gun. Although life had played many tricks with him, he always overcame them.”

“To turn away from the enemy is cowardice. Misfortune is the fate of the enemy.
( When he learned that the Crusaders had come toward him )”

“And yet — and yet! He had done the right thing, though the Lord alone knew how it would end. He began to pluck courage from his very melancholy, and hope from his reflexions on the transitoriness of life. He was austerely following Romance as he conceived it, and if that capricious lady had taken one dream from him she might yet reward him with a better.”

“The doctrine of anthropocentricism has now vanished from intelligent minds, and is in the act of vanishing from unintelligent minds. It is destined to continue to fade until there is not a particle of it left. It is rank imposture. It is too silly and childish even for simpletons. Man is not a being apart. He is not a favorite of the gods, nor the subject of celestial anxiety. Nothing revolves about him or exists for him. Like all the other inhabitants of this world, he is a mere by-product of the play of cosmic forces—forces which grind on without eyes, without anxiety, and without end.”

“The fighting had ended and his old routines had begun to be re-established ‑ even El Morito had reappeared, skinny and flea-ridden - but nothing was as it had been. He was like someone who had stepped into a long, dark, and frightening tunnel and, coming into the light, could not blink away the darkness that continued to cloud the periphery of his vision. The world was a more arbitrary and crueler place, and even though his family surrounded him, he knew now that he was essentially alone in it.”

“If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away. If he doesn't want you, nothing can make him stay.”

“Free! The word and the thought alone were worth fifty blankets. He was warm from end to end as he thought of the jolly world outside, waiting eagerly for him to make his triumphal entrance, ready to serve him and play up to him, anxious to help him and to keep him company, as it always had been in days of old before misfortune fell upon him.”