“It was a thought, that. Not to attach yourself to a man, but to confront instead the open world, the wide fields of France and Spain, the ocean, anything. Not just to hitch a lift with the first fe...”

“Things could change so entirely, in a heartbeat; the world could be made entirely anew, because someone was kind.”

“Because he wanted nothing from her; this was a generous, expansive feeling, unattached to the possibility of gratification; it was the simple happiness that came from knowing that one particular pe...”

“Other, dryer customers came and went, having just stepped out of their conveyances or popped down the street from their houses in the town. They left their umbrellas dripping at the door, and looke...”

“Like two side to a coin, there are two sides to life: your reason and emotional facets.”

“Is that all, sir? Only we've got stuff to finish before our knocking-off time, you see, and if we stay late we have to make more money to pay our overtime, and if the lads is a bit tired we ends up...”

“But those coins are wishes! Youre stealing other peoples wishes!The look Matteo gave her was so flinty, she could have chipped a tooth on it. If you have money to waste on wishes, you dont need the...”

“There is no friendship in trade.”

“Peace is a natural effect of trade.”

“Our relations with the Indians have been governed chiefly by treaties and trade, or war and subjugation.”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”