“To tell you the truth, I'm amazed we've come this far," he said, and I agreed. We had hiked 500 miles, a million and a quarter steps, since setting off from Amicalola. We had grounds to be proud. We were real hikers now. We had shit in the woods and slept with bears. We had become, we would forever be, mountain men.”

“We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things any more; we believe in the war.”

“Out of the unreal shadows of night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off... p 207”

“What is freedom?" he asked bitterly, "and who is truly free? We are all bound by what we are, and where we come from.""Maybe," I said slowly as I considered the turn my life had taken, the lies I had been told, "because we do not look farther than where we have been told to look. Perhaps it would all be different if we weren't afraid of what we are. Or what we might become.”

“Men like us are good and proud and strong...if we had a faith, a God, nothing could undermine us. But we had nothing, we had to learn everything, and living for honor alone has its weaknesses...”

“We must have a creature made of Darkness to break through the cage of Darkenss that imprisons your grandmother," Thanatos said. "That creature is me." Aurox stepped forward."Oh, for shit's sake! We are absolutely fucked!" Aphrodite said. Sadly I had to agree with her.”