“No! See, that's the thing-you were the one I would have chosen, even if there were no fate."..."I wanted you, even when I wasn't supposed to be with you.”

“You see, now that trials have come, they have shown that I am NOT a nice child. I was afraid they would. Perhaps... that is what they were sent for... I suppose there MIGHT be good in things, even if we don't see it.”

“If a woman could take care of herself, would she still need a man? Would she even want one? And if she didn't want a man, what kind of woman would she be? Would she even be a woman? Because it seemed if you were a woman, the only thing you were really supposed to want was a man.”

“Dard, [...] forgive me, but I wasn't in love with you. I wanted you. That's a very different thing. I like you and I enjoy your company, and for a while I lusted for you. But I don't want to go north with you and be your queen. Even if I were in love with you I wouldn't want that. I swore an oath when i became an officer and I can't, and won't, surrender my allegiance to my king.”

“Basically, I realized I was living in that awful stage of life between twenty-six to and thirty-seven known as stupidity. It's when you don't know anything, not even as much as you did when you were younger, and you don't even have a philosophy about all the things you don't know, the way you did when you were twenty or would again when you were thirty-eight.”

“Even though I wasn't there, you were always with me. Always.”