“What are you doing?" Alain asked."Starting a fire, of course." Mari held up the thing in her hand. "It's a fire-starter. A really simple device. Haven't you ever seen one?"Alain shook his head. "Ne...”

“The light changed slightly. Mari looked up and over at one wall. There was now a narrow, roughly door-shaped hole in it. Standing in the hole was Mage Alain. Mari stood up, realizing that her mouth...”

“Just realize that the Mechanics do not exist and are not worthy of your attention. Unless they threaten you, and then you must kill them, Mage Alain. Mechanics are as merciless as they are mercenar...”

“What were the Mechanic's elders like? She had said they were like his own, strange though that sounded. Did they listen to her? Had she passed on the warning, only to have her elders dismiss her wo...”

“Are you all right? With your Guild, I mean?"Alain considered the question. "They suspect me of being attracted to a Mechanic. They are right, but so far lack proof. They do not suspect that I love ...”

“Her hand gripped his, and even amid the fear and danger he marveled at the feeling that came with the contact. If we die holding hands in this way, will we enter the next dream together?”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“We are all so guilty at the way we have allowed the world around us to become more ugly and tasteless every year that we surrender to terror and steep ourselves in it.”

“Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion”

“All others are outside myself;I lock my door and bar them outThe turmoil, tedium, gad-about.I lock my door upon myself,And bar them out; but who shall wallSelf from myself, most loathed of all?If I...”

“Stick-thin, alabaster-pale Etienne LeBlanc runs down the rue de Dinan with Madame Ruelle, the bakers wife, on his heels: the least-robust rescue ever assembled.”

“In river rescues, members of the Kansas City Fire Department rescue squad yell profanity-laced threats at victims before they get to them. If they don't, the victim will grab on to them and push th...”

“When it was too late for rescue, it was still early enough for revenge.”