“Memory has no power but what the soul chooses to make of it.”

“So what is this feadnach? Is it another curse that makes me beholden to slaves and shrews?''No, my lord. It is your heart. Difficult as it may be to comprehend, there is a possibility you may have one.”

“Books don't prattle. Books don't make demands. Yet they give you everything they possess. It's a very satisfying partnership.”

“Of all the things I had learned in my life, nothing was so simple as fanatics imagined.”

“On my seventh birthday, my father swore, for the first of many times, that I would die facedown in a cesspool. On that same occasion, my mother, with all the accompanying mystery and elevated language appropriate for a prominent diviner, turned her cards, screamed delicately, and proclaimed that my doom was written in water and blood and ice. As for me, from about that time and for twenty years since, I had spat on my middle finger and slapped the rump of every aingerou I noticed, murmuring the sincerest, devoutest prayer that I might prove my parents' predictions wrong. Not so much that I feared the doom itself - doom is just the hind end of living, after all - but to see the two who birthed me confounded.”

“From the instant of our first meeting I judged him so, though it could be said that I was prejudiced. When one is standing naked on a slave-auction block in a wind cold enough to freeze a demon's backside, one is unlikely to have a fair impression of anyone.”

“You have the power to think whatever you choose to allow into your head. If something just "pops" into your head, you have the power to make it go away. You have the power to decide that a particular emotion is a "choice" rather than a condition of life. And you have the power, similarly, to choose beliefs that empower you, that bring out your best.”