“At its best, fantasy rewards the reader with a sense of wonder about what lies within the heart of the commonplace world. The greatest tales are told over and over, in many ways, through centuries. Fantasy changes with the changing times, and yet it is still the oldest kind of tale in the world, for it began once upon a time, and we haven't heard the end of it yet.”

“The idea of fairyland fascinates me because it's one of those things, like mermaids and dragons, that doesn't really exist, but everyone knows about it anyway. Fairyland lies only in the eye of the beholder who is usually a fabricator of fantasy. So what good is it, this enchanted, fickle land which in some tales bodes little good to humans and, in others, is the land of peace and perpetual summer where everyone longs to be? Perhaps it's just a glimpse of our deepest wishes and greatest fears, the farthest boundaries of our imaginations. We go there because we can; we come back because we must. What we see there becomes our tales.”

“Faey lived, for those who knew how to find her, within Ombria's past. Parts of the city's past lay within time's reach, beneath the streets in great old limestone tunnels: the hovels and mansions and sunken river that Ombria shrugged off like a forgotten skin, and buried beneath itself through the centuries.”

“He exuded ambiguities she decided, that was his fascination.His mouth spoke; his eyes said something other: his smile belied everything....He played with the language of the Circle of Days like a child with an arsenal of twigs.... His music said otherwise it seemed to echo through time out of a past as old as the stones on the hill. He lied with every note he played. Or in his music he finally told the truth.”

“...that once were urgent and necessary for an orderly world and now were buried away, gathering dust and of no use to anyone.”

“I thought of you with your hair silver as snow all through that cold, slow journey from Sirle. I felt you troubled deep within me, and there was no other place in the world I would rather have been than in the cold night riding to you. When you opened your gates to me, I was home.”

“Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.”