Trevanian Quotes

#1. In seeming contradiction of physical laws, time is heavy only when it is empty.

Trevanian

#2. Generalization is flawed thinking only when applied to individuals. It is the most accurate way to describe the mass, the Wad. And yours is a democracy, a dictatorship of the Wad.

Trevanian

#3. No one really likes Switzerland, except those who prefer cleanliness to life.

Trevanian

#4. Ripe for romance? Is that not only the self-conscious and sensitive young man's way of saying he was heavy with passion? Is not, perhaps, romance only the fiction by means of which the tender-minded negotiate their lust?

Trevanian

#5. Niceness is an overrated quality. Being nice is how a man pays his way into a party if he hasn't the guts to be tough or the class to be brilliant.

Trevanian

#6. And he recalled the ancient adage: Who must do the harsh things? He who can.

Trevanian

#7. The rope connecting two men on a mountain is more than nylon protection; it is an organic thing that transmits subtle messages of intent and disposition from man to man; it is an extension of the tactile senses, a psychological bond, a wire along which currents of communication flow.

Trevanian

#8. Do not fall into the error of the artist who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience - twenty times.

Trevanian

#9. Obtuseness was its own defense

Trevanian

#10. However, little by little, I am coming to the view that what I mistook for humility was, in fact, an accurate evaluation of your worth.

Trevanian

#11. The Trevanian Buff is a strange and wonderful creature: an outsider, a natural elitist, not so much a cynic as an idealist mugged by reality, not just one of those who march to a different drummer, but the solo drummer in a parade of one.

Trevanian

#12. We all desire to be understood, but no one enjoys being obvious.

Trevanian

#13. Indeed, my first interest in the pioneer work of Doctor Freud sprang, not from a concern for persons wounded in their collisions with reality, but from my personal curiosity about the nature of creativity and the springs of motivation. So

Trevanian

#14. Pass through knowledge to arrive at simplicity.

Trevanian

#15. It is revealing of the American culture that its prototypic hero is the cowboy: an uneducated, boorish, Victorian migrant agricultural worker.

Trevanian

#16. Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double-entry accounting.

Trevanian

#17. Irony is Fate's most common figure of speech.

Trevanian

#18. Hana: What on Earth is a 'barbeque'? Hel: A primitive tribal ritual featuring paper plates, elbows, flying insects, encrusted meat, hush puppies, and beer. Hana: I daren't ask what a 'hush puppy' is. Hel: Don't.

Trevanian

#19. Why did I submit myself to the butchery of the trenches when I might have served in the echelons as a medical officer? Even the most rudimentary knowledge of Doctor Freud would suggest that I was pursuing a death wish

Trevanian