“Besides, they cast an eye to the past, they didn't disgrace the ground they trod and they believed in the future again. That's what a victory does for you.”

“Temujin nodded. He had every intention to do his bit in the battle, like his mother.”

“And I saw you and I thought, she'd be a cosy fit inside my arm.”

“For a few heady weeks of the year the steppe in a binge throws out a wilderness of flowers that tangle your hooves and confuse your horse.”

“Besides, they cast an eye to the past, they didn't disgrace the ground they trod and they believed in the future again. That's what a victory does for you.”

“Temujin watched Borte's ballet, her elegance on the fulcrum of her hips.”

“I am a neighbour king to stretch my branches over him, just as Toghrul sheltered me when I was a weed-stalk next to a strong tree.”

“Temujin had had not the slightest notion that bad emotion can just grow and grow from inside you and squeeze out the universe.”

“He only knows a single thing to clasp, that like God can't be split up into pieces: our honesty to one another.”

“Perceptions? Yesugei didn't give a goat's toenail about perceptions, but society was society. ...'Who gives a billy's balls what one or two wives have to say?''Quite, father.' This was strong language, to cite the nether parts, stronger than toenails.”

“Such coincidences were the rhymes that God wrote into fate, his chords of music.”