“In the end, family is all we have, my dear. You’ll do well to remember that.”

“When everything around me is crumbling to pieces, all I have to do is look at you and I can keep going, keep living. You’re warm, Quinn. The warmest person I’ve ever known. I never realized just how devoid of warmth my life was until you came into it.”

“I’ve never met another woman since you that I could trust with my life and yet never for a goddamn minute would I trust any word she says.”

“How could he possibly understand just how much she had to give and how desperately she wanted to give it to him, and him alone? He, who had the weight of the world on his shoulders, but bore it with this capable strength. He, who stood alone at the top, silent and courageous in his dedication to the legacy he had inherited. And lastly, he, who so clearly needed someone, anyone, to understand him.”

“She was the only solace he could find in the storm raging around him, like a lighthouse shining through the darkness of a violent hurricane.”

“When empires fall, what becomes of the Queen? Everything will burn, and so will she.”

“I do not know what she was thinking, but I was remembering the years we have lived together, yet never together, and what a waste they have been--of each other, and of love, which is the most unpardonable waste there is. Love and time, those are the only two things in all the world and all of life that cannot be bought, but only spent.”