Michael

“When the beer came, I dipped a finger in it and wet down each corner of the paper napkin to anchor it, so it would not come up with the mug each time and make me appear ridiculous. I”
― Charles Portis, The Dog of the South

“He was opposed by the Senate’s more traditional concept of success, the defeat of barbarians in battle and their elimination from the ranks of the army, whilst at the same time they resisted the conscription needed to make the employment of barbarians unnecessary and resented the need to pay the taxes.”
― Ian Hughes, Stilicho: The Vandal Who Saved Rome

“For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“If there are ten thousand medieval peasants who create vampires by believing them real, there may be one–probably a child–who will imagine the stake necessary to kill it. But a stake is only stupid wood; the mind is the mallet which drives it home.”
― Stephen King, It