“If you are killed because you are a writer, that’s the maximum expression of respect, you know.”– Mario Vargas Llosa Related Quotes “We human beings glimpse lofty ideals, catch ourselves betraying them, and sink to suicidal despair–despair from which only the love of our friends can save us, since friends see in us those nobler qualities we ourselves, out of long familiarity, have forgotten we possess. That, of course, is why the suicidal person is difficult around his friends.”— John Gardner “Pleasure can impact your happiness for better or worse, but it is not happiness.”— James Randall Robison “(…) Clay knew better. He and Gabriel had been friends for thirty-five years, and Gabe had been talking him into doing recklessly stupid shit for damn near all of them. He was a charismatic craftsman: every heart a furnace, every soul a blade.”— Nicholas Eames