Steven Brust

"I will always hold to those principles by which I have been raised… To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity… To hold myself to higher standards of conduct than I hold another. To never strike without cause, and, when there is cause, to strike for the heart..."

"Stalin is the perfect example of what I was talking about. To simply call him corrupt tells us nothing useful. What circumstances put him into power? What objective pressures, as well as subjective characteristics, led him to make the decisions he made? Im currently reading Trotskys writings from 1932 (scary how accurately he predicts the way WWII would play out), and analyzing the details of why Stalin did as he did is far more complex and useful than just, power corrupts. And it is even more true for the other great dictators of the 20th Century: I don’t think you can even say that Hitler and Mussolini were corrupt: they came to power in order to do the very things they did."

"A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be."

"Still, all this time, I was only barely aware that my subconscious was putting together a layout of the house. It wasnt that I expected to need one, its just how my mind works. I am, quite frankly, very good at it, and maybe thats where the real pleasure comes in — just the joy of doing something you do well. There are worse reasons for doing things; maybe there arent any better ones."

"When theres nothing you can do except worry, thats a good time to worry."

"A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless."

"It isnt always easy to act on whats in your head instead of whats in your heart. And it isnt always right to. The whole trick to knowing what to do is deciding when to make yourself listen to your head, and when its okay to just follow your feelings."

"Why do you work so hard to make yourself disliked? I should think youd find it happens enough on its own without putting yourself to any extra trouble."