Life,' Graveworthy said, when he saw Jack was awake and staring at him, 'is a series of desperate gambles and boxing matches for the wits, bookended on the one side by events in which one is shot at, and on the other end by mornings like this.

Why, of course, if the reader were smart enough, he could figure the whole thing through after just the first few pages! But in his heart Arthur knew that his readers didn't really want to win. They wanted to test their wits against the author at full pitch, and they wanted to lose. To be dazzled.

A true leader leads for the sake of love and his knowledge of the path, a bad leader redirects his followers to the path of destruction.

What are wits for unless a man uses them?

Getting something and having the wits to use it...Those are two different things.

It doesn't really matter if you are left behind the back, but what matters is your capacity to pull and push everyone by your way to get to the front.

Intelligence is a way of thinking, not a choice of words.

Great wits jump.

His wits have gone dark as his eyes.

The first and last weakness of his life, before him again. For a moment he felt himself blinded by his own memories; his own remembrances of the wits and wiles of Marian Halcombe that would steal into his thoughts; the sound of her laughter at his outrageous tales, the shadowed glance of distrust, the way her eyebrows would raise ever so slightly despite her resolution to seem disinterested in his foreign insights. She was the first woman he ventured to have complete equality in matching his tremendous cleverness.