“I hate her." Merlin laughed, tossing the stick down. "Not so. You have forgotten how to love. That's a different sorrow.”

“That's love? To let someone beat you and be hateful to you? These people are all so... Weak. Powerless to change their lives. I know the feeling. All you can do is take it. No one understands how it beats you down.”

“It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years.”

“All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems... But all these stars are silent. You-You alone will have stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me... You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure... It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh”

“I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

“What are you thinking?""Just how different everything down there is now, you know, now that I can see.""Everything down there is exactly the same," he said. "You're the one that's different.”