“They sometimes forgot what happened if you let a pawn get all the way up the board.”

“He hated games they made the world look too simple. Chess, in particular, had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the king lounged about doing nothing. If only the pawns would've united ... the whole board could've been a republic in about a dozen moves.”

“Om rubed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show tortoise how to fly. Then we let go.”

“Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board and look all over the place for the dice.”

“The only way to get something to turn up when you need it is to need it to turn up.”

“Time was something that largely happened to other people; he viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn't live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle.”

“Tell someone you are going to rob them and all that will happen is that you'll get a reputation as a truthful man.”