“Life is a balance. We tend to forget that as we go blithely from day to day. We eat and drink and sleep and assume we will always rise up the next day, that meals and rest will always replenish us. Injuries we expect to heal, and pain to lessen as time goes by. Even when we are faced with wounds that heal more slowly, with pain that lessens by day only to return in full force at nightfall, even when sleep does not leave us rested, we still expect that somehow tomorrow will all come back into balance and that we will go on. At some point, the exquisite balance has tipped, and despite all our flailing efforts, we begin the slow fall from the body that maintains itself to the body that struggles, nails clawing, to cling to what it used to be.”

“Life is a balance. We tend to forget that as we go blithely from day to day. We eat and drink and sleep and assume we will always rise up the next day, that meals and rest will always replenish us. Injuries we expect to heal, and pain to lessen as time goes by. Even when we are faced with wounds that heal more slowly, with pain that lessens by day only to return in full force at nightfall, even when sleep does not leave us rested, we still expect that somehow tomorrow will all come back into balance and that we will go on. At some point, the exquisite balance has tipped, and despite all our flailing efforts, we begin the slow fall from the body that maintains itself to the body that struggles, nails clawing, to cling to what it used to be.”

“That is one thing that in all my years among your folk I have never become accustomed to. The great importance that you attach to what gender one is.”

“You," I surmised, and gestured round. "Thank you.""No," he denied. His pale hair floated out from beneath his cap in a halo as he shook his head. "But I assisted. Thank you for bathing. It makes my task of checking on you less onerous. I'm glad you're awake. You snore abominably."I let this comment pass. "You've grown." I observed. "Yes. So have you. And you've been sick. And you slept quite a long time. And now you're awake and bathed and fed. You still look terrible. But you no longer smell. It's late afternoon now. Are there any other obvious facts you'd like to review?”

“I feared my own kind more than anything the natural world could ever threaten me with.”

“Men cannot grieve as dogs do. But they grieve for many years.”

“Leave the pain behind and let your life be your own again. There is a place where all time is now, and the choices are simple and always your own.Wolves have no kings”

“It is the nature of human that we tend to pass our pain along. As if we could get rid of it by inflicting an equal hurt on someone else.”

“History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.”

“Life is not a race to restore a past situation. Nor does one have to hurry to meet the future. Seeing how things change is what makes life interesting.”

“A woman of many talents. And intelligent, too. He'd probably have to kill her soon.”

“It's too late to apologize for I have already forgiven you." -FitzChivalry Farseer”