“And how is your head? Better?" he asked."Very much. Sometimes it hurts." Right now it was throbbing. "But every day I am much improved.""Where did you hit it? Are you bruised?"I put a hand to the back of my head, a little to the left, where I had landed with such jarring force. "Here," I said. "It's still a little tender."And leaning forward, he touched my hair right where I had just laid my hand. Such was he glamour that attended him that I expected the ache to instantly melt away, healed by his royal caress. But in fact, I felt a sudden leap in my heart that made the pain briefly more intense.”

“I'm fascinated by the idea of disparate, difficult people learning to trust each other when they're thrust into hellish circumstances.”

“You must welcome bounty whenever it comes, hunti man. It is often inconvenient. But if you insist on accepting it only when it suits your schedule, you will find yourself very poor.”

“He leaned upon her as if there was no other support anywhere in the world, and she held him as if she would undertake no other task for all eternity.”

“Are you asking me if there is a god?' he said, still in that soft voice. 'All I can say is, I believe there is. I feel him when I sing. He has responded to my prayers countless times. He guides my actions and he dwells in my heart. I know he is there.”

“I was Amazement--I was Desire--I was Ecstasy and Rapture and the slightest bit of Greed.”

“Amalie took his hand and spread it against her heart. Her smile was utterly tranquil. 'The world changes and the world stays the same', she told him, ... 'The old moon sets. New moon rises.”

“If mankind's greatest achievement is to produce more spaces for mankind to live in, I do not think I am so impressed.”

“And you're not leaving," she said. "Promise me."It was as if she had asked him to promise to keep breathing, to notice sunshine, to permit the spinning of the earth. What choice did he have? Even if he left her, she would be camped in his heart, an insistent and willful presence. She would match her strides to his on any journey he ever took; she would lie beside him on any bed.Amalie, he said, "that's the easiest promise I've ever had to make.”

“You have not traveled enough," she said. "Or you'd know that every journeymakes its own map across your heart.”

“There is nothing but heartache for a coru woman and a hunti man," she said, deliberately contrary. "He cannot control her and she cannot change him.""He never fails her and she always moves him," Darien corrected. "She can trust his strength, and he can be lifted by her joy.”