“Creating fantasy is real work, important work. It’s a hard, cold world we live in, and sometimes we need to escape. Sometimes we need that more than food or water or a roof over our heads.”

“Sometimes love was sacred, the most holy and powerful force in the universe. Sometimes it was a warm, fuzzy feeling. Occasionally it was a wildfire of passion that, like cognac, inflamed every cell of your body.And sometimes it was just a decision, plain and simple.”

“There's very little in my world that a foot massage and a thin-crust, everything-on-it pizza won't set right.”

“Now. Now, Annwyl. No need to curtsy. A simple nod of your head and absolute worship will be more than enough.”

“Thus it often is with us, we take a course, and we keep to it, as if we were infallible, and we allow nothing to alter our convictions. We persuade ourselves that we are right, and we hold on our course unmoved. Death steps in: and now, when the past is irrevocable, the scales that have so long darkened our eyes, fall at once to the ground, and we see that we were wrong after all. How much cruel conduct, how many harsh words, how many little unkindnesses do we wish unspoken and undone when we look upon a dead face we have loved, or stand by the side of a new-made grave! how we wish—how we wish that we could but have the time over again! Perhaps in past times we were quite content with our own conduct; we had no doubts in our mind but that we always did what was right and kind, and that we were in every way doing our duty. But now in what a different light do right and duty appear! how we regret that we ever caused tears to flow from those dear eyes, now never to open again! why could we not have made those small concessions which would have cost us so little, why were we so hard upon that trifling fault, why so impatient with that little failing? Ah me! ah me! if we could but live our lives over again, how different, oh, how different it should be! And yet while we say this, we do not think that there are others yet alive upon whose faults we are just as hard, with whose failings we bear just as little, and that these, too, may some day go down into the quiet grave, and that we may again have to stand beside and cry 'peccavi'.”

“What are we doing with him?" Briec asked eagerly. "Are we throwing him out a window? Let's throw him out a window! Or off the roof!”

“And you, Bloss, may shove it ... sideways ... with barbed wire wrapped around it.”