“The desperate resilience,the annoyed flamboyance;his personable passivity and his phobic aggressiveness; all trapped in the clever wrinkles of his fingers, the hard unsociable cast of his knuckles, the safe hopelessness of the pads.”

“A person's shadow stood for his legacy, his impact on the world. Some people cast hardly any shadow at all. Some cast long, deep shadows that endured for centuries.”

“There is nothing more unsociable than man, and nothing more sociable: unsociable by his vice, sociable by his nature.”

“Kirpal’s left hand swoops down and catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, a wrinkle at the edge of his eyes behind his spectacles.”

“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties or his possessions. ”

“Absorbing the rest of her shadow into his, he knuckled the wall on either side of her head, trapping her in the cage of his arms, but not touching. The cool, sweaty bricks ground into his skin. She shivered and flattened her hands as if clinging to the wall for protection. Fire flared low in his gut, spurring him on.”