“The future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises.”

“Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.”

“It is one thing to lead by example with half a dozen soldiers at your back. It is wholly another with ten thousand.”

“Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one's wake, with all sorts of strange things snarled in the knotted strands.”

“Do I see control on all sides, or the illusion of control?" List’s face twisted slightly. "Sometimes the two are one and the same. In terms of their effect, I mean. The only difference – or so Coltaine says – is that when you bloody the real thing, it absorbs the damage, while the other shatters.”

“There’s a sweet promise to giving up, but realizing that demands a journey. One of spirit. You can’t walk to Hood’s Gate, you find it before you when the fog clears.”

“As if the only genuine gestures were the small ones, the ones devoid of an audience. As if true honesty belonged to solitude, since to be witnessed was to perform, and performance was inherently false since it invited expectation.”