“This is the gift of humanity: that it is claimed by the self. None of us...are human unless and until we claim it for ourselves. But nothing can stop that claiming - not the eight million gods nor the spirits nor ghosts. Nothing but ourselves, anyway.And our lives become the poems we were born to tell.”

“We ascribe meanings because it is our nature to do so..We can no more see a thing without searching for a meaning than we can see a snag in a robe without pulling on the loose thread.”

“Love and memory and thought and dream ~ My favorite poems have never been written in words.”

“Cats have a sort of game they play when they meet. A player alternates between watching the strange cat and ignoring her, grooming or examining everything around herself - a dead leaf, a cloud - with complete absorption. It is almost accidental how the two cats approach, a sidelong step and then the sitting again. This often ends in a flurry of spitting and slashing claws, too fast to see clearly, and then one or the other (or both) of the cats leap out of range. The game can have one exchange or many - and is not so different from the first meetings of women.”

“That's not a goal," Kit said."Why? Because it's not yours? Which is better, Kit Meinem of Atyar? A single great victory, or a thousand small ones?”

“Waiting required a future to wait for: a falsehood. I know now that there is only now. I remember things that happened months (or what is years?) ago: old -worn-out nows. The future happens, but it is always shaped from a series of nows.”

“Adventures are what happens when an event is flawed, a mark of imperfection.”