“I'm looking forward to the noose. Nothing better than a good hanging.”

“A little politeness might smooth the way ahead. Knowing it was his turn to be dispatched, the best he could hope for was as swift a death as the one Massetti had so thanklessly received.”

“When the power falls on me, it buzzes in the warm, dark spaces of my skull. It stings like nettles at the tips of my fingers. The power is a fever I have felt since early childhood, a heat in the blood that leaves me flushed and unsteady, dreaming in daylight.”

“Don't step backward toward nothing, step forward toward something, better awkward steps forward, than coward steps backward.”

“Seasons are like life. Some seasons are better than others. Some have more sun and rainbows. Others have storms and tornadoes. Some have both. You have to accept that, and bring colour and light to the season you're in as best you can, and always look forward to the next season.”

“Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing art everything? When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity - then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!”

“Hang you, DeVere! She's a close friend, nothing more." He furrowed his brow once again. "Though I do fear of late that she entertains some...expectations.""You think the young widow may aspire to quite another surrogate role? They all do, ol' chap. Expectations and demands—titles, money, time, attention. The female half of the species are little better than vampires, sucking away one's very lifeblood.”