“The strange thing about Roman soldiers in the comics was the amount of trouble they took over their armor and their helmets, and then, after all that, they left their legs bare. It didn't make any sense at all. Weatherwise or otherwise.”

“Rahel thought of the someone who had taken the trouble to go up there with cans of paint, white for the clouds, blue for the sky, silver for the jets, and brushes, and thinner.”

“History was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestor whispering inside. To understand history, we have to go inside and listen to what they're saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.”

“A fee clarified things. Disjuncted sex from love. Needs from feelings.”

“He held her as though she was a gift. Given to him in love. Something still and small. Unbearably precious.”

“Chacko marvelled at how someone so small and undefined, so vague in her resemblances,could so completely command the attention, the love, the sanity, of a grown man.”

“It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.”