“She saw him fracture into rainbow colors through the prism of her love.”

“They feared her [the dream beloved], knowing that, being impossible, she was irresistable, and that was why the king loved her best.”

“She watched him recede into the past as he stood...each successive moment of him passing before her eyes and being lost forever.”

“human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions”

“Rashid did not give in. "Look how his hands move on the contols," he told her. "In those worlds left-handedness does not impede him. Amazingly, he is almost ambidextrous." Soraya snorted with annoyance. "Have you seen his handwriting?" she said. "Will his hedgehogs and plumbers help with that? Will his 'pisps' and 'wees' get him through school? Such names! They sound like going to the bathroom or what." Rashid began to smile placatingly. "The term is consoles," he began but Soraya turned on her heel and walked away, waving one hand high above her head. "Do not speak to me of such things," she said over her shoulder, speaking in her grandest voice. "I am in-console-able.”

“She dreamed of him, his face, filling the dream. "Things are ending," he told her. "This civilization; things are closing in on it. It has been quite a culture, brilliant and foul, cannibal and Christian, the glory of the world. We should celebrate it while we can; until night falls."She didn't agree, not even in the dream, but she knew, as she dreamed, that there was no point telling him now.”

“The thief’s widow had turned him, before she married him, into a thief of a stupid and terrible kind, because she had made him rob himself.”