“The past is our ultimate privacy; we pile it up, year by year, decade by decade, it stows itself away, with its perverse random recall system.”

“But her thoughts are often of the past. That evanescent, pervasive, slippery internal landscape known to no one else, that vast accretion of data on which you depend - without it you would not be yourself. Impossible to share and no one else could view it anyway. The past is out ultimate privacy; we pile it up, year by year, decade by decade, it stows itself away, with its perverse random recall system.”

“We fashion our destinies with our own hands, by deed or by default, one decade, one year, one hour at a time.”

“Speak up, destiny, speak up! Destiny always seems decades away, but suddenly it's not decades away; it's right now. But maybe destiny is always right now, right here, right this very instant, maybe.”

“From then on I began to measure my life not by years but by decades.”

“Ten years was not enough. Stone shouldnot crumble after just a decade of neglect. The filth should not have piled up so quickly—not with so few inhabitants, most of whom were incapacitated. It was as if Elantris were intent on dying, a city committing suicide.”