“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 . . .”

“I knew you would come,” he said, “in the end. I have been waiting a long, long time.”Time seemed to change as he spoke its name, bending out of shape, out of rhythm, curving round to encapsulate them in their own miniature cosmos. The past was coiled around the future: the present was an isolated moment, belonging nowhere, trapped at random in a maze of inverse reflections.”

“I am his lover. They had made no promises, no vows; this was an interlude which might end with the next sunset or ebb with the changing tide. Yet she knew, with a certainty that belongs only to the young, that this was for always. Whether she had a year, or a week, or just a few hours, she would make it last forever.”

“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.”

“Everyone has to act out of character sometimes. It's like taking your clothes off: you feel free without your character but very naked, unprotected. Unfinished. So you get dressed again- you put on yourself-and then you know who you are.”

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