Subhash Kapoor

“All sorts of situations exist where one tells lies in order to reach an acceptable truth, and our conversation continued thus until we agreed on the mutually acceptable sum of ten thousand dollars, which, if being only half what I asked for, was twice their original offer. After the representative wrote a new check, I signed the documents and we traded farewell pleasantries that were worth as little as the trading cards of unknown baseball players.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“The reason all the 'intellectuals' – Sartre and Marx, Hemingway and Hellman – (. . .) are Leftists is that a defining characteristic of the 'intellectual' is the belief, stemming from inane notions of the perfectibility of man, that he can sit in a darkened room and purely by thinking, create a new heaven and a new earth, utopia, the eschaton immanentized. Rubbish, of course, but there you have it.”
― Markham Shaw Pyle

“The bargaining position of the victor always diminishes with time. Whatever is not exacted during the shock of defeat becomes increasingly difficult to attain later.”
― Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles