"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."

"I'd rather be running the game than playing it."

"Do you think it's possible to discuss politics without preaching?"

"All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool."

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

"But once you allow yourself to recognize necessity, you find two things: One you find your options so restricted that the only course of action is obvious, and, two, that a great sense of freedom comes with the decision."

"Every once in while, a person will do something obvious and direct that is no more than it appears to be. I think they do it to throw you off."

"No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will cramp his style."

"There are millions of ways for people to die, if you number each vital organ, each ways it can fail, all the poisons from the earth and the sea which can cause these failures."

"Minneapolis has two seasons: Road Removal and Snow Repair."

"The struggle is always worthwhile, if the end be worthwhile and the means honorable; foreknowledge of defeat is not sufficient reason to withdraw from the contest."