“There was a whole army of people who seemed not to have anything better to do than to try to disrupt her life, and , if they were given the opportunity, to correct the way she had chosen to live it.”

“She was a little given to rehearsing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who had upset her in one way and another.”

“...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.”

“Son, you were your mother's peace. You brought her so much peace and joy from the very first time she held you, that she knew she had to name you Pax. Your mother loved you more than anything in the world. She would have gladly given her life a hundred times over to keep you safe. Whatever you do, just live a good life for her. She had so many hopes for you. But when it boils down to it, all she would want is for you to be happy.”

“Peter's mother was grand, in her way. She managed to complain almost ceaselessly without ever seeming trivial or kvetchy. She was regal rather than crotchety, she had been sent to live in this world from a better one, and she saved herself from mere mean-spiritedness by offering resignation in place of bile - by implying, every hour of her life, that although she objected to almost everybody and everythng she did so because she'd presided over some utopia, and so knew from experience how much better we all could do. She wanted more than anything to live under a benevolent dictator who was exactly like her without being her - if she actually ruled she would relinquish her right to object, and without her right to object who and what would she be?”

“They were truly new people. No longer Forest People, certainly not the Horde. They were outcasts. They were the chosen. Those who had died. Those who lived.”