“More and more I had come to see the Capped as lacking what seemed to me the essence of humanity, the vital spark of defiance against the rulers of the world.”

“Having achieved what I thought was an ultimate ambition, I found, as I think is often the case, that there remained something more.”

“What men do matters more than what they know.”

“Then I went to the windows and pulled them open. The rain had stopped and the night was very still, black except for the glow behind the western hills that marked the Burning Lands. A dog barked far off, once and no more.”

“He was sometimes stern but more often kindly---just according to his lights, but he saw the world in simple shades of black and white, and found it hard to be patient with things that struck him as foolishness.”

“What I was suddenly aware of was the importance of their being whatever each of them was--cocky and contemptuous, or bothered and beaten--as long as it was something they'd come to in their own way: the importance of being human, in fact. The peace and harmony Uncle Ian and the others claimed to be handing out in fact was death, because without being yourself, an individual, you weren't really alive.”

“I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which had brought us together had gone, and now our paths diverged, according to our natures and needs. We would meet again, from time to time, but always a little more as strangers; until perhaps at last, as old men with only memories left, we could sit together and try to share them.”