Bliss by O.Z. Livaneli

The ambassador laughed.

"Human beings go through a "camel phase" during which they carry all the foolish prejudices society burdens them with. Then comes the "lion phase," when they fight against all such prejudices. But there's another phase only few achieve: the childhood phase, which requires one to consider life with the naiveté of a child, to play games, to be open to all kinds of influences, and to find one's lost innocence again. That's why I play games."

"I would never have thought that you would be an admirer of Nietzsche," said Irfan, as he toasted the old man.

"Well, I only accept his theory up to a point," the ambassador replied. "All that superhuman stuff is crap."

The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson

"When he was younger, Ian had assumed that as you got older things became clear. Adults had seemed so sure, so knowledgeable, not just about facts and figures but about the big questions: the difference between right and wrong; what was true and what wasn't; what life was all about. He'd assumed that you went to school because you had to learn things, starting off with the easy stuff and moving on to bigger issues, once you'd learned them that was it, the way ahead opened up and thereafter life was simple and straightforward.

What a joke. The older he got the more complicated and obscure everything became. He understood nothing anymore - nothing and nobody, including himself."

Basilica The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's by R.A. Scotti

"Motives are rarely pure or purely wicked, but a muddle of ambition, ambivalence, misperception, and sometimes desperation. If our own motives are often unclear, the motives of a pope or a painter five hundred years ago are at best conjecture. I have tried not to ascribe or assume motive and suggest it only when I can quote someone's own words. Since even these can be misleading, proceed with a generous mind."

Basilica The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's
by R.A. Scotti