I fear I am losing my mind. I do not mean “losing my grasp of reality.” I know perfectly well what is happening. But I am powerless to prevent the outcome. Each day, I have less strength of mind to resist.

For a colonel, the way you’re talking, you don’t seem to like the military very much.” “Of course I don’t. Who in his right mind would?

Except that it was no more home, just the place where he had grown up, and that first day back, touring the once familiar places only made him realize that he had already lived close to half his life.

Hey, what about you? That monastery didn’t make you soft, I hope.” “The Cistercians?” Chris laughed. “Make me soft? They’re the toughest order in the Catholic Church.” “They really don’t talk?” “Not only that. They believe in brutal daily work. I might as well have spent another six years in Special Forces.

Learn to respect a craftsman’s talent, to realize that a task done well seems easy but is terribly difficult.

Fasting is the only method of suicide permitted by the Catholic Church. All other ways imply despair, a distrust of God’s wisdom, an unwillingness to bear the hardships with which God tests his children. An absolute sin, suicide’s punishment is eternal damnation in the fires of Hell. But fasting is undertaken for the purpose of penance, meditation, and spiritual ecstasy. It purifies the spirit by denying the body. It brings a soul closer to God.

If he had really wanted to control himself, he could have. He simply had not wanted to control himself. To live his way, he had been determined to fight anyone who interfered. So all right then, in a way he had fought for a principle. But it was not that simple, because he had also been proud and delighted to show how good he was at fighting.

People who know various movie versions don’t really know the story.

As long as thriller authors teach us about our world, they’ll be relevant.

We act upon assumptions that control our view of reality, even though reality might be quite different... By definition, what is unthinkable isn’t part of our reality... your assumptions about what is possible prevent you from accurately seeing the reality before you.