“You--cannot ever be certain of those you love--that they will not hurt you, even loving you. But to make me certain to love you, will be to take away any love I might give you freely.”

“I thought of you with your hair silver as snow all through that cold, slow journey from Sirle. I felt you troubled deep within me, and there was no other place in the world I would rather have been...”

“I wish you were small again, so I could hold you in my arms and comfort you. But you are grown, and you know that for some things there is no comfort.”

“I need you to forgive me. And then perhaps I can begin to forgive myself. There is no one but you who can do that either.”

“Be patient, as you must always be patient with new pale seeds buried in the dark ground. When you are stronger, you can begin to think again. But now is the time to feel.”

“Shall I add a man to my collection?”

“Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.”

“As time and space are bent by gravity, so too is truth bent by power.”

“What a curious power words have.”

“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....”