“Fighting was an exhausting business, and so was fear.”

“To fight on the winning side was one thing; to survive, quite another.”

“Roger became aware, in a subliminally marital way, that his wife was disgruntled at the thought of being left behind to organize the harvest-a filthy, exhausting job at the best of times-whilst he frolicked with a squad of his co-religionists in the romantically exciting metropolis of Cross Creek, population two hundred.”

“People are gregarious by necessity. Since the days of the first cave dwellers, humans -- hairless, weak, and helpless save for cunning -- have survived by joining together in groups; knowing, as so many other edible creatures have found, that there is protection in numbers. And that knowledge, bred in the bone, is what lies behind mob rule. Because to step outside the group, let alone to stand against it was for uncounted thousands of years death to the creature who dared it. To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct. And I feared I did not have it, and fearing, was ashamed.”

“Boldness in battle is nothing out of the way... but to face down fear in cold blood is rare in any man.”

“There was a smell about the place, which I imagined as the smell of misery and fear, though I supposed it was no more than the niff of ancient squalor and an absence of drains.”

“This was nonsense, he thought. The need of her was a physical thing, like the thirsty of a sailor becalmed for weeks on the sea. He'd felt the need before, often, often, in their years apart. But why now? She was safe; he knew where she was - was it only the exhaustion of the past weeks and days, or perhaps the weakness of creeping age that made his bones ache, as though she had in fact been torn from his body, as God had made Eve from Adam's rib?”