“Father, I can beat him, he'd said, andhe'd ridden out and returned to a hero'swelcome, to have his armour stripped byservants, to have his father greet himwith pride. He remembered that night,all those nights, the galvanising power ofhis father's expansionist victories, theapprobation, as success flowed fromsuccess. He had not thought about theway it had played out on the other sideof the field. When this game began, Iwas younger.”

“You fight them, his father had said. You don't trust them. His father had been right. And his father had been ready. Rabatians were cowards and deceivers, they should have scattered when their duplicitous attack met the full force of the Akielon army. But for some reason they hadn't fallen at the first sign of a real fight, they had stood firm, and shown metal, and, for hour upon hour, they had fought, until the Akielon lines had begun to slip and falter.And their general wasn't the king, it was the twenty-five year old prince, holding the field. Father, I can take him, he'd said.Then go, his father had said, and bringus back victory.”

“When I first met him, he had a recurrent nightmare that Henry Kissinger was chasing him with a knife, and I said it was really his father, and he said it was really Henry Kissinger, and I said it was his father and he said it was Henry Kissinger, and this went on for months until he started going to the Central American shrinkette, who said Henry Kissinger was really his younger sister.”

“Bett didn't have any siblings because she said her father had preserved what was dead for too long to be able to create life. When Bet was younger and had begged for one, her father gave her a marmot he' stuffed for a man from Wyoming."This is your brother Christopher," he'd said, placing the marmot on Bett's pillow one night. "He doesn't talk much, so you'll have to pick up the slack there.”

“Beat him until there’s no skin left on his back. If he passes out, wake him and beat him again. (Father)Love you, too, Father. (Acheron)”

“Father may have been wanting in some things, but here he was masterful. Night upon night, I marveled at his power to hold listeners in rapt attention. He could tell a story with such detail, such flourish, that afterwards a man could swear it had been his own memory, and not a tale at all.”