“He was neither clever nor sensitive, but he was loyal--stubbornly sometimes, and even annoyingly and stupidly so in later life.”

“He looked on people, and he neither liked nor disliked them. He looked on life and was neither heartened nor saddened.”

“He was stubborn as a mule, clever as a monkey, and nimble as a hare.”

“And if the man who once upon a time had been a boy who promised he'd never fall in love with another girl as long as he lived kept his promise, it wasn't because he was stubborn or even loyal. He couldn't help it.”

“How the mighty have fallen,” he said, looking down on Aten. Ard-Greimne was short and incredibly sensitive about his height. He always wore shoes with lifts in them. When Aten didn’t respond, he tried again. “I said, how the mighty—”“It wasn’t funny or even clever the first time you said it,” Aten said. “Nor is it original.”

“He who kills from afar knows nothing at all about act of killing. He who kills from afar derives no lesson from life or from death; he neither risks nor stains his hands with blood, nor hears the breathing of his adversary, nor reads the fear, courage, or indifference in his eyes. He who kills from afar tests neither his arm, his heart, nor his conscience, nor does he create ghosts that will later haunt him every single night for the rest of his life. He who kills from afar is a knave who commends to others the dirty and terrible task that is his own.”