“I've been working hard at assuming Court polish, but the more I learn about what really goes on behind the pretty voices and waving fans and graceful bows, the more I comprehend that what is really said matters little, so long as the manner in which it is said pleases. I understand it, but I don't like it. Were I truly influential, then I would halt this foolishness that decrees that in Court one cannot be sick; that to admit you are sick is really to admit to political or social or romantic defeat; that to admit to any emotions usually means one really feels the opposite. It is a terrible kind of falsehood that people can only claim feelings as a kind of social weapon.”

“The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans.”

“When people first discover beauty, they tend to linger. Even if they don’t at first recognize it for what it is.”

“If more people recognized the difference between friendship and mere attraction, or how love must partake of both to prosper, I expect there'd be more happy people." "And a lot fewer poems and plays," I said, laughing as I splashed about in the scented water.”

“It would have been funny if I had been an observer and not a participant, an idea that gave me a disconcerting insight into gossip. As I walked beside the silent Tamara, I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.”

“If your opponent is better armed and has longer reach, then surprise is your only ally. And then you'd better hope he's half asleep.”

“Who in the universe halts when the enemy tells them to?”

“But I will never ask anyone from our village-from any village in Tlanth-to risk his or her life unless I'm willing to myself.”

“No, my career as a warrior princess, short as it had been, was over, I thought morosely. Violence only works if you're good at it. Otherwise, it hurts too much.”

“Why is it the songs all end with the good people winning, but in life they don't?"They don't make songs when the good lose," I muttered. "They make war chants against the bad. So there won't be any songs for us.”

“Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.”