“Chantal's only ruse … was her shattering simplicity. While a weak man or an imposter is always more complicated than the problem he is trying to solve, and thinking to encompass his adversary, merely keeps prowling interminably around himself, the heroic nature will throw itself into the heart of the danger to turn it to its own use, just as captured artillery is turned about and aimed at the backs of the fleeing enemy.”

“Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.”

“Just as an enemy is more dangerous to a retreating army, so every trouble that fortune brings attacks us all the harder if we yield and turn our backs.”
Quemadmodum perniciosior est hostis fugientibus, sic omne fortuitum incommodum magis instat cedenti et averso.

“Even the idea of evolution doesn’t explain nature— Simply, because it’s based on turning simplicity into complicated things.”

“It’s more difficult to create the problem than to solve it. All the person trying to solve the problem has to do is always respect the problem’s creator.”

“The poet, absorbed in the solving of formal problems, the struggle with slippery eels of language, has no time for dissimulation and he tells us more about himself than he knows.”

“Flogging. The only solution to every problem. I warrant even the culprit himself doesn't know! It was just — his turn!”

“Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.”

“The scariest thing in it may be the way the clock radio has a way of turning itself on, loudly, of its own accord. The song is always the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun."”

“The clearsighted eye turns the light back
to see its own Original Nature…”