“Trust, like money, needed a guarantee to back it.”

“Money is only one kind of power. Faith is power, too. Love is power. Slaughter and madness are both roads to power. Certainly, symbols are power you wear one wherever you go, that purse you carry....”

“Oh, she said. Yes. She was warm with the wine, with the shape of the plan shed begun to form, and could not keep the merriment from her voice, the joy of reaching out into the world and altering it...”

“With the discipline of the body comes discipline of the soul.”

“The Hierarchic Qualm: The sword kills. But the arm moves the sword. Is the arm to blame for murder? No. The mind moves the arm. Is the mind to blame? No. The mind has sworn an oath to duty, and tha...”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes.” She was warm with the wine, with the shape of the plan she’d begun to form, and could not keep the merriment from her voice, the joy of reaching out into the world and alterin...”

“There are many different stories to tell. It's never the same. Every day weather blows in and out, alters the surface. Sometimes it is stripped down to a single essential truth, the thing that is a...”

“I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later...”

“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.All of them?Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, cap...”