"Finding in himself a profound strain of yearning, Pereban had mistaken it for religion. He entered the temple and dedicated himself to the worship of the goddess. Thereafter her statue—a roughhewn lump of rock with painted blobs for eyes and black wool for hair—so disappointed him that he kneeled to it, and beat himself regularly, every morning."

"We are the sum of our achievements, nothing more and nothing less. The mountain road which led us here was built by a dead people none of us would remember otherwise. What we create is the only part of us which can survive, or has the right to. Man is nothing, except to other men."

"Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters."

"Such is the civilizing effect of city life upon men. It kills the instincts and replaces them with extended noses."

"I do not know why it distressed me so much to see an animal die when human death did not move me. Perhaps because they were more beautiful, and there is no corruption in them, while in the best of men there can always be found some guilt or wickedness which seems to have earned him death."

"“Some god must be laughing somewhere.” “Some god is always laughing. That is, if you believe in them, which is surely enough to make them laugh.”"

"Westward and inland there was a form of government, some prince or other sitting on his backside ordering this or that."

"Strange, that when we feel we understand all things, we understand nothing. Strange, that when we feel we understand nothing, we have begun, at last, to understand."

"“What can we do?” said they, limping home. “We are only ordinary men.” By which they meant they thought themselves extraordinary enough that their skins must be saved at all costs."

"“Sometimes, Skorous,” Draco said, “you are a fool.” “Sometimes I am not alone in that.”"

"Sometimes the communications between these two partners are so complex, and have so many permutations, that I can't follow them. Their relationship seems to be a little like chess, but without the rules."

"He has been described as having a dancer’s body, a wrestler’s shoulders, a pianist’s hands, the legs of a marathon runner, the face of a young god, and the hair of a Renaissance prince. None of these descriptions seemed, to the off-hand observer, to be inaccurate."

"Let us prove to the world that superstition is idiocy and all the demons are dust."

"There were clouds like sharks with open jaws in the sky that morning."

"We should go and ask the princess for help. She seems very nice, and she’s much too beautiful to be unkind."

"He had been too near the hard facts of religions as a child to find it soothing."

"Wealth, or large amounts of possessions seemed to him limiting. They brought their own prison with them. He preferred, since he had once known a kind of prison, to travel free."

"All in all he had not done badly out of the war, but the smells of it, the sights of it, and the cries of pain that attended it like the vultures, had sickened and soured him. Yes, he could fight well enough. And kill efficiently. He feared death, like other men, but could put that from his mind in battle, and he was no fool with a sword or knife. But several smoking ruins ago there had come a curious shift inside himself. He had lost his sense of purpose in the war; he supposed because it was not truly his own purpose but that of the King."

"White was the most fashionable color among the nobility and the rich. Because, of course, white is so easily dirtied, and only the wealthy would do little enough that it could not be spoiled."

"Odd, how different different men’s fears could be."

"For an instant a half-formed prayer struggled into Havor’s mouth. But he could not utter it. Not for himself. For him those words were already drowned by the noise the thong-whip had made, or the sounds of children crying out of hunger or the cold or sheer misery in that grey house of orphans in the far North, eight years ago."

"I know the old ways. There’s nothing evil there, only strange, and not even strange when you know it."

"It’s legend now, but legend is the smoke from the fire, and the wood that the fire consumes is the substance."

"When you fell in the sea, you should have heard them cheer. I made them rope the yard and fish you up. I said a ducking in water washes the witch-skill out of a woman until next full moon, and it would be bad luck to let you drown. How about that for a clever story? They’d believe anything if you make it sound silly enough."

"Now there was that look of waiting, and submission—not the frenzy of the stadium, but the quiet sleep-trance of belief. Something stirred in me at it, as I realized I had them in my palm. I stood very still in my white and black, holding the copper things in my hands, and then I began to walk between them toward the god. And I laughed at the god as I went toward him. You—what are you? And he had no answer for me, for here it was the priest who was the power, not the god, poor empty stone."

"Vazkor had picked his creatures well—narrow, unintelligent men, good fighters, unafraid because they had no imagination, loyal because they responded to their own sense, and until now, there had always been enough food and wine, women and prestige; trustworthy in this last extremity because the old order had been good to them, and Vazkor seemed able to restore it."

"He showed no fear. It seemed that, at the commencement, his race had known gods and no other. Gods had bound and ill treated and slaughtered and played with them. Gods were a fact, as were the sun and the shaking of the earth. Just another terrible reality."

"I raised my arms as if in prayer and heard the mutter of response behind me. Then I scattered the dried grains, red and brown and black, and studied the patterns they formed on the stone ledge before Sibbos. This is not such a mystic thing. You see what it is sensible to see, or else you interpret what you see so that the meaning comes out as you want it."

"Spells are words, and words are merely noises. You are the sorceress, not your instruction. Don’t limit yourself."

"“Your beauty leaves me breathless,” said Pereban. “Yet you find the breath to say so.”"

"The Prince then remembered the white-haired Theel in the Castle of Bone, who had also been kind, if a little odd, and he wondered why such nice creatures always seemed to live in bad places with wicked things going on all around them. “That’s easy,” said the girl, seeming to read his thoughts as the other Theel had done. “The bad places are where we can do the most good.”"

"“But what am I to do?” cried the Prince. “What you feel you must,” said the Theel. “That’s the only thing to do at any time.”"

"It was idiotic to be superstitious."

"Like many a longed-for gift, it was, in possession, unwelcome."

"“Why,” she said, “did they leave their kingdom to us?” “As well ask why they brought our ancestors to this star. Oh, yes, I think our races were taken from some other planet entirely, to be their toy. If we guess them to be gods, why stint them? Their avarice and callousness would be gargantuan. We can hardly fail to see that.”"

"Ceedres was her god. To be happy, she must worship him, and let him destroy her, and take pleasure in it."

"But among the aristocrats whose existence could be lengthily prolonged into three or four hundred spans, boredom came to be the killer, a bizarre running down, a sort of decline and decay, nonphysical but fatal."

"“I can’t guess,” said Olvia, “why he accepted my invitation. If I had realized he would, I would never have sent it.”"

"For, though sometimes worshipping gods, the Yunea did not permit itself to stray too far onto the abstract path of sheer faith. An ambience of security was all the aristocrats required, a guarantee that fate loved them."

"In our place, we can hardly go backward, but neither should we ignore the nakedness of humanity before the huge-wheeled vehicle of progress. We have too much to give, and far too much to learn, to throw ourselves away."

"She had no reason not to believe in the impossible. Desperation was always ready to pray for miracles."

"Self-love is neither fantasy nor vulgar joke. The totality of the “I,” the inbuilt survival and self-protective trait, is one of the most unshakable syndromes known to psycho-science."

"In the partial silence, the ocean asserted itself, waves hurled loudly against rock, slithering back with smashed spines, then, healed by immersion, hurled forward again."

"The harshest lesson of all was that which ran contrary to the teaching of his own personality."

"To be static was never wise. Cobwebs clung to walls which stood. Men must journey, for in motion lay the seed, or at least the symbol of progress."

"He took her virginity with the gentle care of love, and with love’s glorious violence."