“By means of our myths and legends we maintain a sense of what we are worth and who we are. Without them we should undoubtedly go mad.”

“Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful”

“Our Di had, according to her myth, been hounded to death by the baying werewolves of the yellow press. Of course it was now plain I was one. Maybe even the worst of them. Some people claimed they had actually seen me baying. In the tunnel. With the blood of their angel on my hands.”

“We must be bound to one another then," Elric murmured despairingly. "Bound by hell-forged chains and fate-haunted circumstance. Well, then—let it be thus so—and men will have cause to tremble and flee when they hear the names of Elric of Melinbone and Stormbringer, his sword. We are two of a kind—produced by an age which has deserted us. Let us give this age cause to hate us!”

“And now, Elric had told three lies. The first concerned his cousin Yyrkoon. The second concerned the Black Sword. The third concerned Cymoril. And upon those three lies was Elric's destiny to be built, for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.”

“I suppose it was a mistake to sketch in a background for the movie, in which I described a likely mix of people in a late-Roman settlement, amongst them people from Africa and the Near East. 'You mean they had black people back then!' was actually what my boss exclaimed when he read that. 'Could Lancelot's sidekick be black?”

“She had always been beautiful in his eyes, and admirable, too. He had worshipped her, in some ways, for her courage in adversity, for her resistance to the ways of his own world. But that had been bravery under siege and now, it seemed, she single-handedly gave siege to the same society which, a few months before, had threatened to engulf and destroy her identity. There was a determination in her bearing, a lightness, an air of confidence, that proclaimed to everyone what he had always sensed in her - and he was proud that his world should see her as the woman he knew, in full command of herself and her situation. Yet there was, as well, a private knowledge, an intimate understanding between them, of the resources of character on which she drew to achieve that command. For the first time he became conscious of the depth of his love for her and, although he had always known that she had loved him, he became confident that her emotion was as strong as his own. Like her, he required no declaration; her bearing was declaration enough.Together, they ascended.”