“I look at the others, simpering courtiers and visiting dignitaries, all unsuspecting of what is to come. A merciful man should spare them, but I had mercy cut out of me at a young age.”

“Sulphurous wind gusted in his wake; the dust of the street swirled and the folds of his black coat flapped against his thin body.”

“The stars sparkled above the mist shrouded tents and caravans of the carnival. The night crackled with an odd vibration, as if a veil of peculiarity settled over the company.”

“Shine and shimmer my Harvest Moon,illuminate the shadows in the sky.”

“What if you reached the Age of Reason, only to find there was no reprieve,Would you be a Man for All Seasons, or would you just disbelieve?”

“I am nothing, yes; I am air and darkness, a word, a promise. I watch in the crystal and I wait in the hollow hills. But out there in the light I have a young king and a bright sword to do my work for me, and build what will stand when my name is only a word for forgotten songs and outworn wisdom, and when your name, Morgause, is only a hissing in the dark.”

“The thing is, you make choices. You do some things and you don't do others and in the end there's not much point in asking what different choices might have gained you, and lost you, unless you have a time machine. You become those choices, you embody them...I'd known I couldn't stay, just as I'd known years before I couldn't be with him, even as I'd gone on pretending I had a choice. I was who I was, and I wanted what I already had.”