“Utter loneliness was planted in me then, and sent its deep roots down into me.”
“...a great part of what unmanned me was distress at the destruction of my own body. It was odd to realise that I had an emotional attachment to my own flesh. My deep desire to keep it functioning well surpassed simple avoidance of pain. A man takes pride in his body. When it is damaged, it is more than a physical thing.”
“Locked into loneliness were we two and looking at one another every evening we each saw the one we blamed for it.”
“King Shrewd is expecting me, rather he isn't expecting me, and that is precisely why I must go to him now.”
“As I apologized to her a flicker of panic raced through me and then faded away. There wasn't enough life left in me to panic. I'd made a mistake and I was dying. Apparently not even a Speck afterlife was available to me. I'd simply stop being. Apparently I hadn't died correctly. Oops.”
“Uma pedrinha pode fazer sair uma roda do seu caminho, disse-me ele, mas avisou-me que a experiência raramente era agradável para a pedrinha.”
“I believed that by fixing it down in words, I could force sense from all that had happened, that effect would follow cause, and the reason for each event come clear to me. But then I returned one day, to find all my careful scribing gone to fragments of vellum lying in a trampled yard with wet snow blowing over them. I sat my horse, looking down at them, and knew that, as it always would, the past had broken free of my effort to define and understand it. History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.”