“Those intricate curves and patterns your people create are beyond human eyes and hands to make. Perhaps we wished to avoid a poor imitation that would only have been an ever-present reminder to us ...”

“Women often seemed to leave things unsaid, and in his limited experience it was what they did not say that proved the most trouble.”

“No man can walk so long in the Shadow that he cannot come again to the Light.”

“I do not like odd things until I can understand them.”

“Always something new, always something I didn't expect, and sometimes it isn't horrible.”

“There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone.”

“I was relying on youth be loyal to the specific variety of compromise and unhappiness, which our hard-won marriage represents.”

“It is not until an act occurs within the landscape of the past and future that it is a human act. Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of...”