“His voice was low, charged with unspeakable adjectives.”

“The voice of a rebeck echoed from somewhere behind him. The music echoed and echoed until it entered his head, still echoing. It suffused his body and he felt himself to be large, very large, not a child at all. And his skin was not his own.”

“A voice hissed: "He sheds tears!"It was taken around the ring "Usal gives moisture to the dead!"He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers.”

“Bless the Maker and His water.Bless the coming and going of Him.May His passage cleanse the world.May He keep the world for His people. ”

“Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.”

“The smoke! The golden smoke! His robe whipped upward, turning him until his face was directed downward into the abyss. With his gaze on the depths, he recognized a maelstrom of boiling rapids there, the mirror of his life-precipitous currents and plunges, all movement gathering up all substance. Leto’s words wound through his mind on a path of golden smoke: “Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.” Moneo fell freely then in the ecstasy of awareness. The universe opened for him like clear glass, everything flowing in a no Time.”

“The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy.”