“Briar: "They never tell you some things. They tell you mages have wonderful power and they learn all kinds of secrets. Nobody ever mentions that some secrets you don't ever want to learn." Rosethorn: "All you can do is learn good to balance the bad. Learn and do all the good within your reach. Then, if you wake in a sweat, you have something to set against the dream.”

“The first thing every mage should learn is that magic makes fools of us. Now you may call yourself a mage. You have learned the most important lesson.”

“Sandry: "There has to be something we can do." Lark: "We're mages. We do what we can, but some problems are too big to fix." Sandry: "Then I wish I weren't a mage. What good is magic, if you can't use it to help people.”

“Briar: "So I guess I was the last to know." Rosethorn: "Of course you are. You're a man, aren't you?”

“Faithful: When will you learn to leave well enough alone?Alanna sighed. "When I want to stop learning, I guess.”

“Daja doesn't exactly need to be tested on whether she's honorable or not." "Doesn't she? Don't all of you? This is your first taste of the things which may come from your being powerful mages. People will offer you gold, status, even love. I want to know how you will react. If want to know if your teachers will release greedy, thoughtless monsters into the world.”

“Have I mentioned that I hate it when you're right?", she asked instead. Alanna shook her head. "No, I don't believe you have. As far as I could tell, you never thought I was right.”