“Mischief nodded. 'It's true,' he conceded. 'You're in the company of eight world-class thieves,' he said, not without a little touch of pride. 'Saints we are not.' But then,' said Deaux-Deaux, 'who is?' he thought on this. 'Besides saints.”

“We made our choice, he said. We hunted for them, we guarded their brats. God knows, we helped them make a civilization, didn't we? And why? I said I didn't know; it was beyond me. Because, he said, we thought they knew how to take care of things. How to keep the world full of meat and flowers.”

“Help me', he said, like a lost child.Go to Hell, the room respectfully replied; and for the first time in his life, he knew exactly what that meant.”

“A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself.”

“Quitoon knew the world well. It wasn't jut Humankind and its works he knew, but all manner of things without any clear connection between them. He knew about spices, parliaments, salamanders, lullabies, curses, forms of discourse and disease; of riddles, chains, and sanities; ways to make sweetmeats, love and widows; tales to tell children, tales to tell their parents, tales to tell yourself on days when everything you know means nothing.”

“Never a truer word said or thought. Anything was possible.”

“Kaufman almost smiled at the perfection of its horror. He felt an offer of insanity tickling the base of his skull, tempting him into oblivion, promising a blank indifference to the world.”