“If someone had told her that she would be transported to what was for all purposes a magical land, where history could be rewritten at a whim, or people could suddenly be shrunk to the size of poppy seeds, but that at least for this moment, her most pressing concern would have been the absence of cigarettes, she would have thought them mad.”

“She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best.”

“Even the king's Erkynguard might have wished to be elsewhere, rather than here on this killing ground where duty brought them and loyalty prisoned them. Only the mercenaries were here by choice. To Simon, the minds of men who would come to this of their own will were suddenly as incomprehensible as the thoughts of spiders or lizards—less so, even, for the small creatures of the earth almost always fled from danger. These were madmen, Simon realized, and that was the direst problem of the world: that madmen should be strong and unafraid, so that they could force their will on the weak and peace-loving. If God allowed such madness to be, Simon could not help thinking, then He was an old god who had lost His grip.”

“You show me what someone listens to, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about his soul. (For instance, a bunch of Nickelback albums would have indicated he never had a soul in the first place.)”

“People in science fiction flicks always seemed to know useful things about the places time travel took them. But what if the time traveler had been only an average history student? What then?”

“How can you care for a rough man like me?' he asked me. 'How can you love a man who can bring you no lands but the farm a soldier's pension can buy? Who can give your children no title of nobility?' Because love does not do sums, I should have told him. Love makes choices, and then gives its all. Had he seen himself as I first saw him though, he could have had no questions.”

“It was frighteningly close to what he believed of his father at the worst moments - that he really was the kind of man who would send a letter signed "Sincerely, Cpl. Peter Vilmos" to someone he'd seen naked.”