Chris O'Brien

“It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Let's say I will rip your life apart. Me and my banker friends."
How can he explain that to him? The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun. Not from the castle walls, but from counting houses, not be the call of the bugle, but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“Keep doing good deeds long enough and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.”
― Louis Auchincloss