“The trouble with me, he thought unhappily, is that I have been about the world long enough to know that God's plans for us, however infallibly good, may not take the form we expect and demand.”

“Only people who're positive enough to have friends have enemies. When you're as glum and morose as he was, people just give up and go away.”

“Once, I remember, Father Abbot said that our purpose is justice, and with God lies the privilege of mercy. But even God, when he intends mercy, needs tools to his hand.”

“I have always known that the best of the Saracens could out-Christian many of us Christians.”

“So, wonder! I also wonder about you," said Cadfael mildly. "Do you know any human creatures who are not strangers, one to another?”

“God, nevertheless, required a little help from men, and what he mostly got was hindrance.”

“If ever you do go back, what is it you want of Evesham?""Do I know? [...] The silence, it might be ... or the stillness. To have no more running to do ... to have arrived, and have no more need to run. The appetite changes. Now I think it would be a beautiful thing to be still.”