"You’d know that if you’d studied something useful like engineering instead of, what is it this year, Down With Dead White Males, or whatever they call your artsy-fartsy curriculum."

"I don’t know how they find things out so quickly, but haven’t you ever noticed how mercenary troops show up about three minutes after somebody’s decided to increase the war budget?"

"At least some of the techniques she’d learned at Valley View still worked. If you talked nonsense long enough and looked like being a major interruption to the day’s work, they would send you on to somebody else. And when they ran out of somebody elses to send you to, the last one would sign whatever it was needed signing just to get you to go away."

"Allie decided that she didn’t understand anything that was going on and didn’t really care. Especially if the sequence of events ended in a hot bath."

"It was one long scene of unrelieved misery; not the sort of thing a man of his position should ever be subjected to. One knew that these things happened in war, of course; they were regrettable but necessary. But one preferred not to experience them at first hand."

"Well, that was interesting. The question she really wanted to ask was, How come you people take all this so seriously? But that wasn’t in the book."

"Savaric never let reality interfere with his assumption that he and his ways were naturally superior to anyone else’s way of doing things and that everybody else in the world was either a dolt or a weakling."

"“You tried to warn me about Aigar. All of you did. And I didn’t want to believe you.” “Loyalty is no crime,” Domerc said gently. “Totally idiotic, unreasoning loyalty is. Or ought to be,” Allie said."

"For once his years of teaching experience stood him in good stead; he was an old hand at sounding knowledgeable while dodging surprise questions from smart-breeched scholars."

"Does mud care which cloak it bespatters?"

"A foot of jade is of no value, an inch of time is to be prized."

"Each man follows the path of destiny, but no two paths are alike. It seems that mine now runs into a place of evil intent, wasted wisdom, and stupidity."

"From a gabled roof the rolling melon has two choices of descent, though both lead to disaster."

"Stout men, not stout walls, make a well-held city."

"Well, we don't know a lot, and most people don't want to learn more’n what's right before their eyes. You point out things that don’t fit into what they've always accepted, and they say it’s all your imagination and nothing like that is real."

"Jade and men are both shaped by harsh tools; be not unaware of sudden changes of fortune."

"He was listening, too, for it is through the eyes and ears that one learns. A spiderweb of facts can tie up the lion of action; not to know is bad; not to strive to know is worse."

"Mrs. Clapp was some distance away, Jeremiah’s trophy laid across one knee, stroking the cat’s head and telling him what a brave, smart boy he was. Jeremiah accepted this praise complacently, with a feline’s estimate of his own worth."

"And life in a continual state of apprehension was no life at all."

"There was a saying of the peasants—the rat cannot call the cat to account. But it was also true that if the moon moves but slowly, still it crosses the city."

"It is always impossible—he was conscious again with that strange clarity of mind—for a man to face his own death honestly. A man always continues to believe to the last moment of his life that something will intervene to save him."

"Only darkness could not be held off by the will of men."

"And the opposite of dreams are facts!"

"They’re females right enough, and they can make the impossible happen. I’d say that classifies them as witches."

"Their tribal system is strictly matriarchal, which follows a pattern even Terra once knew: the fertile earth mother and her priestesses, who became the witches when the gods overruled the goddesses."

"Treasure! That word, which had always been so exciting, meant something different now. Fafnir had taken the treasure and turned from man into monster because of his greed for it. Mimir, who had been Sigurd’s master and good friend—when the treasure had lain before him, he, too, became a monster, in another way. Then Sigurd had made his choice, to leave the evil, and so he had gone away a hero."

"You can’t play the role of thug all over the galaxy and not store up in the subconscious a fine line of private fears and remembered enemies."

"There will be paperwork, no government action can occur without it, but that can come later."

"I gave destiny a push to make it happen. You study history, so stop your pathetic whining. You know better than most that destiny happens to us, it is never something we call forth."

"The Archetype of Man had not leaped to any false conclusions, had not mistaken Jorl for a deity. Rather, it withheld judgment until it had compiled sufficient explanation."

"Prophecy is first and foremost a self-serving gift."

"“You didn’t do any of these things because they were necessarily good unto themselves, but because you saw them as means to shape events to serve your own ends. The entire legacy of the Matriarch is the exploitation of others like pieces in some great game.” She laughed in his face. “You can see it that way if you like. The weak usually do, if they see it at all. But you disappoint me. Despite your study of history, you fail to understand power. It’s obvious you never will...There’s really only one choice you ever have to make in any act of creation. Will you be the instrument or the artist? If you’re only now coming to realize that you’ve been a tool all your life, there’s no one to blame for it but yourself. If you don’t like that state of affairs, then act! Impose your will upon the world and walk your own path. If you don’t, you’ll just end up being a token in someone else’s game; you’ll continue to be used as they see fit. That’s how the universe works. You don’t have to like it, but you’d do well to get used to it.”... “No, maybe that’s the way the world looks once you’ve already decided to take your path. Or maybe it’s just you’re so jaded, or you’ve bought into your own delusions. I don’t know which, and I don’t care. Those aren’t the only choices: use of be used. There is more than being tyrant or servant. I reject both options and I reject you. You’ve been dead for centuries, Margda, it’s about time you accepted that.”"

"Ah, self-interest at last. Despite all of our differences, of race and time and distance, we achieve commonality. I understand self-interest."

"“Oh! This isn’t possible. You’re dead.” “So are you, but we’re not going to let that get in our way.”"

"Your sense of volition, or the lack of it, is an illusion. Everything you’ve done needed doing and was set in motion long ago. Let go of your self-pity. Your feelings in these events matter no more than a leaf’s desire to steer the wind!"

"Was all of the universe a fixed game, if one only knew where and how to look?"

"I’m not accusing you of anything, but we both have studied too much history to ignore coincidence."

"It seems to me, that the most unlikely events almost have to happen, or life would just be dull and no one would write anything down."

"In all the rest of my life’s wanderings, I never met another person who spoke words to rival the beauty of mathematics."

"We’ve met, and it wasn’t the highlight of my being dead."

"It all seemed like madness, but was madness anything other than desperation blended with hope?"

"I’m dead, Jorl. You can’t tell me what to do."

"I mean, sure, like all prophecy the wording is vague."