“I fear you may have matriculated at the Humphrey Tonkin School ofNonpartisan Debate. I do not, however, have a sense that you were his starpupil.”

“To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.”

“You still haven’t told me what King Edward will do when he has all four relics,’ Robert said, fixing Humphrey with his gaze.‘We aren’t privy to all his plans, Robert, as I’ve told you. Only the men of the Round Table know his full intentions. We have to prove ourselves worthy to be trusted as they are.’‘Do you not ever wonder?’Humphrey paused. ‘I just know my kingwill do what is best for my kingdom.’Robert said nothing. He thought of hisown kingdom, beleaguered by Edward’sinterference, and a ghost of a threat drifted in his mind.But even as it appeared, he pushed itaway. Scotland was its own kingdom, with its own king. It wasn’t Wales or Ireland, fractured and isolated. However much Edward had desired the Crown of Arthur he had come here, first and foremost, to put down a rebellion. Yet still, on this bleak shore with Humphrey beside him, Robert felt a sense of standing at a crossroads with many paths leading away before him. In his mind they all led into darkness.”

“I may not have all the education but I do have common sense, and I know how to treat people.”

“In my opinion, this school and its contemporaries were nothing more than cheap merchants of social status, selling an inflated sense of self-worth to middle-class boys of no particular merit.I will, however, grant them something. Without the first school, I would not have ended up at the second. Without the second, I would not have attended St Oswald's. Without St Oswald's, I would not have met Finn.Without Finn, there would be no story.”

“The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope.”