“Were the world a just place and given into Poet Eanrin's hands to dictate, he would have written things as they ought to be. Lionheart would not have bowed like some wooden puppet and left without another word. He would have acted like a man, taken the silver-eyed queen into his arms, and kissed her! He would have told her all the things in his heart that he did not fully understand yet, because, honestly, who ever understands those things anyway?But some stories refuse to play themselves out the way poets think they ought.”

“It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.”

“She wanted to write to him. Tell him she was glad he was back, that he was alive, that he was home and safe. But words to him no longer fit right in her her mouth.Words which belonged in his ownership were no longer hers to give. Silence was the only acceptable state her heart would grant. He would never know what he missed, because she refused to be heard in his presence. All the words he could have had, all the phrases he might have danced with. The smiles which would have been imprinted upon his heart, would never be. And his lips would never be able to reply to the words she could not say.”

“...Closing his eyes, he saw every smile that Rebecca had ever directed his way and knew a pang of regret. He would have liked to have held her in his arms one last time before he died.”

“She had not known how to tell him that his loving whispers were always in her ears, like a story she’d been told, the story of a thing she did not deserve. But he understood. He called those thoughts “the baby teeth of a snake,” and swore he would rip them out of her, and pledged to prove to her that the opposite was true. And he didn’t even have to explain to her what he meant by “the opposite”; she knew it was the opposite of her.”

“There is no man...however wise, who has not at some period in his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man...”