“Alex smiled at Andy's words and then joined in the sudden biscuit battle that broke out. Thrang yelled madly at them for wasting food, but that only made him a target for everyone else.”

“Very well," said Bregnest as a piece of toast hit him on the nose.”

“Remember-doubts may check pride, but too much doubt will keep you from doing what must be done.”

“Her bond with the couple who raised her is fierce and beyond questioning. She cannot name the sensation of losing them as grief. She has no word for longing or despair.”

“I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.""But it's not that easy."He smiled that Frank smile. "Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things...”

“Sir William had only stayed in our company for two nights before leaving during a spectacularly blustery storm. As I watched him leave I evilly hoped that the wind would blow him straight off his horse.”

“The oceans never stop ... the wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island ... Existence here is on the scale of giants. Time is in the millions of years; rocks which from a distance look like dice cast against the shore are boulders hundreds of feet wide, licked round by millennia ...”