Carol Berg

“Of all the things I had learned in my life, nothing was so simple as fanatics imagined.”

“Books don't prattle. Books don't make demands. Yet they give you everything they possess. It's a very satisfying partnership.”

“So what is this feadnach? Is it another curse that makes me beholden to slaves and shrews?''No, my lord. It is your heart. Difficult as it may be to comprehend, there is a possibility you may have one.”

“From the instant of our first meeting I judged him so, though it could be said that I was prejudiced. When one is standing naked on a slave-auction block in a wind cold enough to freeze a demon's backside, one is unlikely to have a fair impression of anyone.”

“On my seventh birthday, my father swore, for the first of many times, that I would die facedown in a cesspool. On that same occasion, my mother, with all the accompanying mystery and elevated language appropriate for a prominent diviner, turned her cards, screamed delicately, and proclaimed that my doom was written in water and blood and ice. As for me, from about that time and for twenty years since, I had spat on my middle finger and slapped the rump of every aingerou I noticed, murmuring the sincerest, devoutest prayer that I might prove my parents' predictions wrong. Not so much that I feared the doom itself - doom is just the hind end of living, after all - but to see the two who birthed me confounded.”

“Memory has no power but what the soul chooses to make of it.”