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my father always told me that what’s wrong with lying is that it’s an admission of weakness. If you’re the strongest, you can afford to tell the truth.)
Lots of things wrong with alcohol, but it has one redeeming virtue; it makes you stupid, and there are times when you need to be too stupid to do the intelligent thing.
She could still remember it, though: the belief that he was a good man, determined to do the best he could in the impossible situation he’d been thrust into. The trouble was, he’d always done his best and every time he’d failed, his failures leading to disaster and misery on a scale that mere malice could never have achieved.
What I mean is, it’s possible for someone to do the sort of things he’s done and still regard himself as a more or less normal human being; he thinks to himself, I’ve done something wrong, but it’s fine, I can put it right. If there really was such a thing as evil, he couldn’t think like that.
That complex, unsatisfactory component only existed in relation to her. Remove her, and there was nothing, no point. It’d be like eating an orange simply to produce orange peel.
I always think luck’s a bit like splitting a log. You’re much more likely to succeed if you read the grain and look for flaw-lines.”
