“The way I’d put it,” said Makin, “is that Rike can’t make an omelet without wading thigh deep in the blood of chickens and wearing their entrails as a necklace.”

“For the longest time I studied revenge to the exclusion of all else. I built my first torture chamber in the dark vaults of imagination. Lying on bloody sheets in the Healing Hall I discovered doors within my mind that I’d not found before, doors that even a child of nine knows should not be opened. Doors that never close again. I threw them wide.”

“Assassination is murder with a touch more precision. Brother Sim is precise.”

“It is purity of spirit that will keep corruption from the flesh”

“We wrap up our violent and mysterious world in a pretense of understanding. We paper over the voids of our comprehension with science and religion, and make believe that order has been imposed. And, for the most of it, the fiction works. We skim across the surfaces, heedless of the depths below. Dragonflies flitting over a lake, miles deep, pursuing erratic paths to pointless ends. Until that moment when something from the cold unknown reaches up to take us.The biggest lies we save for ourselves. We play a game in which we are gods, in which we make choices, and the current follows in our wake. We pretend a separation from the wild. Pretend that a man’s control runs deep, that civilization is more than a veneer, that reason will be our companion in dark places.”

“A sensible man may fear certain possibilities, but don’t let fear turn possibility into certainty.”

“You would think it best to save your breath for running, but I often find screaming helps.”

“Keep still and your troubles find you. I might not have known much about the unborn, but I sure as hell knew about running!”

“It’s always better to sit on your dignity in private than to stand on it in public.”

“I can help you, Jorge. I can give you back your self. I can give you your will.' He held out his hand, palm open. 'Free will has to be taken,' I said.”

“We die a little every day and by degrees we’re reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars.”