“We were not having any fun, he had recently begun pointing out. I would take exception (didn't we do this, didn't we do that) but I had also known what he meant. He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them. He meant wanting. He meant living.”

“What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.”

“And you would have lost. We were surrounded. He threatened your life, and he would have made good on that threat. He had you, and that meant he had me, too.”

“Children are not meant to be studied, but enjoyed. Only by studying to be pleased do we understand them.”

“Brian, maybe you are right after all. It was a plan. It had a beginning, middle and an end. We knew what we wanted to do, what we were going to do, and how to do it. We never meant for it to turn out this way, but you’re right. It was a plan. We got up off the floor and for the first time in two weeks, and we put our school uniforms on.”

“We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor.”