Robert Risher

“The keen Saracen blade sliced through the archbishop's shield down to his arm, but Turpin's aim was truer. Corsablis's turbaned head rolled in the dust as the prelate swung his mighty weapon. The Berber's steed raced on, bearing a headless rider who soon toppled from his mount. Turpin, galloping on to where the press was thickest, turned in his saddle and addressed the head where it lay: 'Scoundrel pagan, you've met your end! So be it always with the enemies of Christ!”
― Mario Andrew Pei, Swords of Anjou

“No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes—forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“That's the beauty of art--we strive for perfection but never achieve it. The journey is everything.”
― Rafe Esquith, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be more lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
― Brad Pitt