“There was some sadness in how that could happen, Tai thought: falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had? But if you didn't change at least a little, where were the passages of a life? Didn't learning, changing, sometimes mean letting go of what had once been seen as true?”

“Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.”

“Branching paths. The turning of days and seasons and years. Life offered you love sometimes, sorrow often. If you were very fortunate, true friendship. Sometimes war came.You did what you could to shape your own peace, before you crossed over to the night and left the world behind, as all men did, to be forgotten or remembered, as time or love allowed.”

“Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.”

“My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned.”

“She had come to accept, deeply, and with certitude, that she had been born into a world, a life, that would not let her be whole.”

“The world could bring you poison in a jewelled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn't know which of them it was.”