... Again she did not seem to hear, still looking into Cale’s eyes. Then slowly, hopelessly, she dropped her gaze. “I understand,” she said. It was that, of course, that pierced him as if she had stabbed him through the heart. To him, it was the sound of lost faith and it was unendurable. He felt he’d become a kind of god in her eyes, and it was simply impossible to give up her adoration.

— Paul Hoffman

As it happens I don't think it was God-the woman who saved me, she doesn't look like she's had much to do with angels, Perhaps the Devil was behind me all the time.

— Paul Hoffman

Better a live dog than a dead lion.

— Paul Hoffman

Do you have any idea how mad you sound?’‘Indeed I do. I have in moments of doubt considered the question of my sanity.’ (...)‘And?’‘Then I consider what a piece of work is man. How defective in reason, how mean his facilities, how ugly in form and movement, in action how like a devil, in apprehension how like a cow. The beauty of the world? The paragon of animals? To me the quintessence of dust.

— Paul Hoffman

Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.

— Paul Hoffman

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims—the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.

— Paul Hoffman

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims - the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is that nobody really possesses a great kind of power for long. Those who have it on loan from Fate count on it too much and are themselves destroyed.

— Paul Hoffman

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.

— Paul Hoffman

...his soul (was) ringing like a well-struck bell. But it was a bell that rang with more than joy and adoration — there was the sound there too of anger and resentment. She would not look at him because she did not want to be in his presence. She hated him and he (how could he not?) hated her in return.

— Paul Hoffman

How can I know for sure if it's my son speaking and not you?"" You never can, my lord. Just as no man can ever be sure that he alone is a thinking and feeling creature and everyone else a machine that only pretends to feel and think.

— Paul Hoffman