“If this is truly the time that will decide, we have no business refusing people who feel the way we do. No right to decide that they must huddle in their homes waiting to see if they are still slaves or not when the summer ends.”

“We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.”

“How we remember changes how we have lived.Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.”

“We must be what we are, or we become our enemies. ”

“Full moon is falling through the sky.Cranes fly through clouds.Wolves howl. I cannot find restBecause I am powerlessTo amend a broken world.Sima Zian added, "I love the man who wrote that, I told you before, but there is so much burden in Chan Du. Duty, assuming all tasks, can betray arrogance. The idea we can know what must be done, and do it properly. We cannot know the future, my friend. It claims so much to imagine we can. And the world is not broken any more than it always, always is.”

“We worship…the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do. We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can’t even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another? [p. 176]”

“I have been made to realize tonight that there are limits to what I wish to do or see done for any cause.”