“Advice is a dangerous thing," the Watcher responded. "It should be given only rarely and cautiously, and taken in small doses with skepticism.”

“I am not tormented, Fern responded. I am... diminished. I have always believed that your soul grows when you do something that is good and brave, a right thing, a true thing, and when you do evil- no matter what the motive- your soul is eroded. Well, my soul is less.”

“You should never trust anyone completely,” said Ragginbone, smiling a half-smile which snaked up one side of his face. “Unpredictability is a vital aspect of intelligence.”

“All things resist destruction, according to their capacity. Rocks, pebbles, diamonds. Unity is instinctive to being.”

“Time is there for a purpose, to keep things in order. Once you change chronology you change history. The past could eat up the present . . .”

“They slept little that night, making their newfound love like people for whom the world is running out. Fern did not think of her Task, not because she had abandoned it, but because she felt it would present itself for her attention when the moment was right, and until then she had an intermission, a suspension of hostilities, given by whatever gods there were. They lay in the cave while outside the tide rose and fell, and she thought that in this life and maybe in all lives she would remember that love sounded like the sea, and the beat of her heart was waves on a beach, and she would hear its echo in the nucleus of every shell.”

“You’d have to trust in Hope,” said Fern. “Is that it?”No,” Ragginbone replied shortly. “Hope needs something tangible to sustain it. You would have to rely on Faith. Only Faith can endure in the teeth of the evidence.”