“He has been dying for a very, very, very long time, and his span came to an end as all eras must.”

“Sometimes fear made you angry. Perhaps after years anger cooled, like a sword taken from a forge. Perhaps in the end you were left with something very cold and very sharp.”

“Fear made everyone look very alive in a strange and fragile way, like the last flare of a candle before it dies.”

“Ordinary life did not stop just because kings rose and fell, Mosca realized. People adapted. If the world turned upside down, everyone ran and hid in their houses, but a very short while later, if all seemed quiet, they came out again and started selling each other potatoes.”

“Through the bars he had laid eyes on a face like glass, somebody who could not lie without it being obvious. And he had seen a way of using that very fact to tell the greatest of lies.”

“It was all very well being told that she could do nothing to make things better. Neverfell did not have the kind of mind that could take that quietly. She did not have the kind of mind that could be quiet at all.”

“She had big, vague eyes and a big, vague smile, and was always very busy in the way that a moth crashing about in a lampshade is busy.”