“Kamil thinks to himself that these are eyes that see everything, ravenous eyes. He feels a pang of longing for the omnivorous freedom of a child's appetite for life, not yet disciplined to distinguish raw from cooked, feasting without caring whether life is served at a table or from a tray on the floor.”

“Take your time in everything, until you feel the pull within yourself. Do not let yourself be guided by fear, or even by desire. And certainly not by the will of others.... Like the moon and the tides, the human heart has many phases. Wait for them. They will not be rushed.”

“Gerdanlouk, he thinks. An evocative Turkish word, with Arabic roots. It means jewelry, but only jewelry adorning a woman between her lower neck and the top of her breasts. Gerdanlouk. He looks away.”

“He himself, he realized, had always been most abominably frightened, even at the height of his divine power, a frail god upon a rickety throne, afraid of opening letters, of making decisions, afraid of the instinctive knowledge in the eyes of mules, of the innocent eyes of good men, of the elastic nature of the passions, even of the devotion he had received from some men, and one woman, and dogs.”

“I stared back at him, trying to think of a way to explain how I'd eradicated the word "want" from my vocabulary long ago and replaced it with "need." It made life so much easier that way, blowing away all the unnecessary and distracting clutter from a life of purpose, much like I imagined a storm sweeping away anything not strong enough to withstand the struggle.”

“He, unfortunately for himself, had been beautifully brought up. His teacher had educated him as the child is educated in the womb, where it lives the history of man from fish to mammal--and, like the child in the womb, he had been protected with love meanwhile. The effect of such an education was that he had grown up without any of the useful accomplishments for living--without malice, vanity, suspicion, cruelty, and the commoner forms of selfishness. Jealousy seemed to him the most ignoble of vices. He was sadly unfitted for hating his best friend or torturing his wife. He had been given too much love and trust to be good at these things.”

“He was standing in the Inner Court, shouting for his enemy. When Guenever saw him, and he saw her, the electric message went between their eyes before they spoke a word. It was as if Elaine and the whole Quest for the Grail had never been. So far as we can make it out, she had accepted her defeat. He must have seen in her eyes that she had given in to him, that she was prepared to leave him to be himself-to love God, and to do whatever he pleased-so long as he was only Lancelot. she was serene and sane again. she had renounced her possessive madness and was joyful to see him living, whatever he did. They were young creatures-the same creatures whose eyes had met with the almost forgotten click of magnets in the smoky Hall of Camelot so long ago. And, in truly yielding, she had won the battle by mistake.”