Asa Giannini

“I never tell anybody," he said. " And not because I'm ashamed. I am ashamed, trust me. But that's not why I never tell it. It's over, it's done, it's history. I spent a year in hell, and then I went to college. I never joined a fraternity. I didn't want a thing to do with fraternities. But I'll tell you what else I never did. I never joined that loose association of counterfraternities, either. That was every bit as much of a club. I never bad-mouthed the frat boys because I knew guys in fraternities and I liked those guys, individually, some of them I liked very well, and if I was ever tempted to bad-mouth them, I could feel it coming over me again. Joining the club, losing control. Losing my convictions. That's what I'm guilty of, Genevieve. Believing I'm better than the group. No better than anyone individually. Worse, because I stood by and watched Henry get wrapped up in a garden hose and kicked over. There is no word for me. Someone better, smarter, more humane than any group. The opposite of an elitist, in a way. But that's not to say," he added, "that I'm not good and fucked up. And full of shame.”
― Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

“What you don't know don't hurt you, for it ain't real. They called that Idealism in my book I had when I was in college, and after I got hold of that principle I became an Idealist. I was a brass-bound Idealist in those days. If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

“His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell