“Do but consider what an excellent thing sleep is...that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Who complains of want? of wounds? of cares? of great men's oppressions? of captivity? whilst he sleepeth? Beggars in their beds take as much pleasure kings: can we therefore surfeit on this delicate Ambrosia? Can we drink too much of that whereof to taste too little tumbles us into a churchyard, and to use it but indifferently throws us into Bedlam? No, no, look upon Endymion, the moon's minion, who slept three score and fifteen years, and was not a hair the worse for it.”

“A child's body is so much a part of who they are; maybe because we can hold a little boy in our arms. We can hold the whole of him. But when we grow too large to be held our body no longer defines us”

“But who can foresee such things? None of us can predict the final outcomes of our actions, and few of us even try; most of us just do what we do to prolong a moment's pleasure or to stop the pain. And even when we act for the noblest reasons, the last link of the chain all too often drips with someone's blood.”

“What we all have discovered together, only rarely in classrooms, is that the passage of years guarantees very little in the way of answers, that ambivalence and ambiguity will follow us all the days of our lives, but that words and wit and woods and food and music will endure as sources of comfort.We have learned that surprises exhilarate, if they don’t barrage us too fast, and that the quest for the proper balances between stillness and motion, restraint and excess, sound and silence, will continue, and that too much freedom—a life too much at large…can feel at least as constricting as too little. We have learned, maybe most importantly of all, to cherish the company of those who can make us laugh, who can forgive us our shortcomings, who can restore to us or evoke in us a feeling of purpose in the face of absurdity.”

“There is a darkness in you. In all of us, probably. Beasts we keep chained. Ordinary men have to keep the chains strong, for if we let the beast loose then society will turn upon us with fiery vengeance. Kings though...well, who is there to turn upon them? So the chains are made of straw. It is the curse of kings, Helikaon, that they can become monsters. And they invariably do.”

“And it was just the three of us - three bodies and two people - the three who knew what had happened and too many layers between all of us too much keeping us from one another.”