“Just now, high above the chaos of Sarantium, it seemed as if there were so many things he wanted to honour or exalt- or take to task, if it came to that, for there was no need for, no justice in, children dying of plague, or young girls being cut into pieces in the forest, or sold in grief for winter grain.If this was the world as the god- or gods- had made it, then mortal man, this mortal man, could acknowledge that and honour the power and infinite majesty that lay within it, but he would not say that it was right, or bow down as if he were only dust or a brittle leaf blown from an autumn tree, helpless in the wind.He might be, all men and women might be as helpless as that leaf, but he would not admit it, and he would do something here on the dome that said- or aspired to say- these things, and more.”

“He had a sense—honed by experience—that what he’d contrived might achieve something of the effect he wanted. That, Martinius had always said, was the best any man in this fallible world could expect. [p. 67]”

“He wanted to achieve something of surpassing beauty that would last. A creation that would mean that he--the mosaic worker Caius Crispus of Varena--had been born, and lived a life, and had come to understand a portion of the nature of the world, of what ran through and beneath the deeds of women and men in their souls and in the beauty and the pain of their short living beneath the sun.”

“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]”

“For all his frustrations and his chronic sense of being overburdened. He was proud of that; he’d always felt that it was worth doing a task properly if it was worth doing at all. That was part of his problem, of course; that was why he ended up with so much to do. It was also the source of his own particular pride: he knew--and he was certain they knew that there was no one else who could handle details such as these as well as he.”

“Eyyia?" said her husband, and Eliane bet Danel heard the mangling of her name as music."You sound like a marsh frog," she said, moving to stand before his chair.By the flickering light she saw him smile."Where have you been," she asked. "My dear. I've needed you so much.""Eyyia," he tried again, and stood up. His eyes were black hollows. They would always be hollows.He opened his arms and she moved into the space they made in the world, and laying her head against his chest she permitted herself the almost unimaginable luxury of grief.”

“No man ever truly possesses a woman, anyhow," said Gidas moodily. "He has her body for a time if he's lucky, but only the most fleeting glimpse into her soul." Gidas was a poet, or wanted to be.”