"“I was arguing with Father Sebastian the other day,” she said thoughtfully. “I quoted the thing about giving all you have to the poor. He said that was all very well but you had to come to terms with the Scriptures and realize there had to be teachers and leaders for the people’s own good. It seemed an awful get-out to me, and I couldn’t help saying so. I told him if the Church would sell half her altar plate she could buy shoes for everybody in the country, and a lot else besides; and that if the Pope would make a start in Rome I’d see about getting rid of a few job lots of furniture down in Corfe. I’m afraid he didn’t take very kindly to it. I know it was wrong of me but he annoys me sometimes; he’s so pious, and it seems to mean so very little. He’d walk miles in the snow to pray for a sick child, he’s a very good man; but if there was more money about to start with, maybe the child wouldn’t have been taken ill. It all seems so unnecessary....”"

"She stopped dead; and the look in her eyes showed plainly she’d just received the import of a crude lesson in economics."

"It’s a terrible thing, being afraid. It’s like an illness; like wanting to fall down, and not being able to faint. You see you never get used to it. You live with it and live with it and every day it’s worse; and one day it’s the worst of all. I thought, when it...happened, I wouldn’t be afraid. But I was wrong...."

"Today begins my walk with you." They spoke together, their voices sounding softly in the cold air. "Where you go, I go. Where you stay, I stay. When you sleep, I will sleep. When you rise, I will rise. I will pass my days within the sound of your voice, and my nights within the reach of your hand. And none shall come between us."

"If everything you do is in order to do something else, when do you ever get to the end of it all?"

"'I don't want to do any of those things you said. I want – I want – to make things right.' 'Then so you shall.' 'Is it so easy?' 'Not easy. Not easy at all. Think how much is wanting to make things wrong. All the fear in the world, and the violence that comes from the fear, and the hatred that comes from the violence, and the loneliness that comes from the hatred. All the unhappiness, all the cruelty, it gathers like clouds in the air, and grows dark and cold and heavy, and falls like grey snow in thick layers over the land. Then the world is all muffled and numb, and no one can hear each other or feel each other. Think how sad and lonely that must be."

"She slapped Kestrel's face. Without thinking twice, Kestrel slapped her back, as hard as she could. The young woman burst into tears. The servant saw this, aghast. "Baby!" she exclaimed. "Oh, my poor baby!" "You've been kind to me," said Kestrel, "and you're very beautiful, but if you hit me again I'll kill you.""

"The English seem to think drinking wine is like committing adultery, something you do rarely and abroad."

"That's where we have to go," said Kestrel, looking at the mountain. "Into the fire."

"Brothers, what we do in life, echoes in eternity."

"I will win the crowd. I will give them something they have never seen before."

"She hasnt gone so far now, she had broken a lot of rules and said such rude things, that she knew she would suffer the most horrible punishment; and since what was done could not be undone, she was free to be as bad as she wanted to be."

"Self-sufficiency is the enemy of salvation. If you are self-sufficient, you have no need of God. If you have no need of God, you do not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him."

"We read to know that we are not alone."

""I wish there were no more exams ever," said Kestrel. "I wish nothing bad happens to Kess," said Bowman. "I wish my darling children to be safe and happy for ever," said their mother. She always wished like that when she was worried. "I wish the wind singer would sing again," said their father."

"Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn fast."

"The song of the wind singer will set you free."

"“Nyxnissa?” She looked back at the queen. “There are no happy endings, Nyxnissa.” “I know,” Nyx said. “Life keeps going.”"

"“We have a war to fight. You don’t understand. We fight in God’s name.” “I understand just fine,” Nyx said."

"It wasn’t what was done to you. Life was what you did with what was done to you."

"Don’t confuse rescue and kidnapping. I have not asked to be rescued."

"You could stand near him, listen to him speak, and feel as if you were in the presence of some wiser man, a true mullah. His uncles were the same. Rich, powerful men whose influence allowed them to profit from the war, not fight in it."

"The world could burn around her, the cities turn to dust, the cries of a hundred thousand fill the air, and she would get up after the fire died and walk barefoot and burned over the charred soil in search of clean water, a weapon, a purpose. She would rebuild."

"She had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn’t make any difference."

"A well-appointed prison is still a prison."

"Not everything that’s beautiful is weak."

"“How can you read such a beautiful book and turn your back on it?” “Never said it wasn’t a beautiful book. I just don’t believe there’s some man up there in the black who gets off on watching us pound our head on the pavement six times a day."

"I’d say I was doing a great job submitting to God by submitting to my desires. Who do you think gave me desire in the first place?"

"Countries at war lived in a state of perpetual fear."

"Time, as it always does, passed."

"You can’t go home again, particularly if you never had one."

"They had both changed in eight years, eroded or subtly augmented by the sweep of time’s river."

"Here he was, not quite twenty-five years old, and he was going to have to make a new life for himself. A host of options lay before him, but, tipsy with Chablis and sunshine, at the moment all he could truly feel was a powerful sense of loss and uncertainty. All the routes to his previous self—the self that had tried to survive as a loner in Fort Walton Beach—were blocked, and he did not know which new path to choose. “Ciao,” he said again, and this time he was not talking to his mother."

"Outside the rain continued its cadenced and indifferent commentary."

"Like all such prophecies, it’s impressive only if not examined too closely."

"He forgave these Tropemen, then felt contempt for himself for the presumption of extending forgiveness, then forgave again, then cursed his own vanity, forgave once more, condemned his presumption, and at last forgave even himself."

"“Magistrate, a problem doesn’t cease to exist simply because you cease to consider it a problem.” ”Very often, Deputy Foutlif, it does.”"

"Necessary is often the mother of light fingers instead of invention."

"A rational, humane solution—for Gelvri, as Elgran Vrai, believed rationality and humaneness tautologies, different names for the same thing."

"Extinction confers on the has-been the same mythological status that imagination confers on the never-was."

"The vitality of children is clean and honest. Their petty shortcomings derive, in ninety-nine out of a hundred instances, from their effete elders’ pettiness. Contagion is a generational fact. But children can develop defenses against their elders’ spiritual scurvy simply because they’re new."

"Coercion is the tool of the desperate."

"But each man who worships you sees only what he wishes to see rather than any mystery you may actually embody."

"Who but a madman would grapple with mountains?"

"What motivates you, then? Please don’t tell me altruism. I am not quite so gullible as that."

"I have thought a little about a telepathic community, and I have decided that it would most likely create either a thoroughly paranoiac or a thoroughly homogeneous unit of individuals. Complete suspicion and hostility in the one instance, total harmony and concord in the other. I do not like either alternative."

"“Do you expect even dreams to unravel rationally, Kahl Balduin? Must each event have a precise, empirical cause?” “No, not if you’re narrating a dream. But if you claim, like the Pledgeson, that your visions and reality are the same thing, then, yes I expect consistency. I’m too old for pointless fairy tales.”"