“Nadir we, youth born, axe wielders, blood letters, victors still.”

“A weapon needs a wielder; it should not be permitted to start its own fights.""You are not my wielder; you are naught, a forgotten ghost, not even a memory.""Maybe, but you are still a weapon.”

“He had outlived the luxurious agonies of youthful blood, and in this very freedom from illusion he recognised the loss of something. From now on, every hour of light-heartedness would be, not a prerogative but an achievement - one more axe or case-bottle or fowling-piece, rescued, Crusoe-fashion, from a sinking ship.”

“Here were love letters, the youth knew. Secret love letters. Unfound, still waiting somewhere beyond the mist. A young man’s words for this girl, maybe her words for him. Their private words for each other. Somewhere in the world, these letters sat hidden still, but might, at any moment, be found and read, calling her most cherished secrets from their hiding place back into the circle of the sun.”

“We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.”

“The wielder of words is the captor of souls.”