“It had been a war of kingly poisons, in the air, in the memory, in the blood.”

“A throne is always paid for in blood.The king of En had told her that once. Even should a king's ascension be bloodless as a gift from Heaven, to hold onto one's throne invariably meant that blood must flow -- as it had at the beginning, in the fight against the false king's armies, and the quelling of civil war, and the execution of criminals.Luckily, the fighting part was easy for Yoko. All she had to do was resist the temptation to run away.”

“He had illuminated the heartbreaking cruelty of war: When men who fight become nothing, only packages of bones and blood deposited in the earth with no clarion call to memory, those they love are left without a way to make such devastating loss hold meaning.”

“Politics is war without blood, while war is politics with blood.”

“Since that time, war had literally been continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war.”

“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”