“You have to see fate as a design, a pattern, and the will as the knife, the blade, the thing slicing through the fabric...”

“If your blade were as sharp as your tongue, you'd have sliced my through years ago.”

“What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.”

“I have a knife in my hand, slicing beef on the willowware plate, and I cut harder, faster, thinking it is your pink neck under my blade and I am cutting you into little pieces that I will bury in the meadow outside when there is no moon.”

“Tragedy was like that, a razor that sliced through time, severing the now from the before, incising the what-might-have-been from reality as cleanly as any surgeon's blade.”

“So you want a knife, a nice sharp knife. You hone that blade to its limits. It even cuts through stone when you want it to. It saves your life. And then you're outraged when it cuts you accidentally. You see, knives don't switch off. And neither do people, not when you hone them to a fine edge.”