“I slept a lot. Which I liked, because being unconscious meant not remembering.”

“Tallennar. I knew what it meant. It meant thief. Well, that was all right. Because a thief really was a lot like a wizard.”

“I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.”

“Me? I slept like the dead, which I hoped wasn’t a sign of things to come.”

“In the cafe there was a lot of stylized cattiness, but this was never unkindly meant. Nothing at all was meant by it. It was a formal game of innuendos about other people being older than they said, about their teeth being false and their hair being a wig. Such conversation was thought to be smart and so very feminine. It was better, I need hardly say, to seem like a truly appalling woman than not like a woman at all.”

“Gilbert's response to being told they (the words 'ruddy' and 'bloody') meant the same thing was: "Not at all, for that would mean that if I said that I admired your ruddy countenance, which I do, I would be saying that I liked your bloody cheek, which I don't.”