“Your human gods love to present you with such riddles and challenges, or so it has seemed to me for most of my life... You often seem to prefer difficult choices when simple alternatives are available; it is a constant source of amazement to my kind.”

“There were two things going on: 1) I had already established in my own mind where I wanted to go with the next series, and having James around as a Grey Eminence would have complicated matters. He had had an amazing life and it was time to bid him good-bye.”

“Forgive me, Magnus.’‘I don’t know if I can.’‘You must.’Still looking into the distance, he said, ‘You need my forgiveness?’‘No. I’m dead. You can do nothing for me. You need to forgive me so you can live.”

“In Tsurani culture, forgiveness was simply a less shameful form of weakness than capitulation.”

“Don't assume the world evolved in the order in which you discovered it.”

“Life is problems. Living is solving problems.”

“Chumaka ended with a quotation from a play that Jiro favored. “ ‘Small acts partner small houses and small minds'.”

“Of all the weaknesses that beset a man, vanity is the most deadly. For through vanity can a wise man turn to folly.”

“Never think taking a life is easy. Do that and in a way they win.”

“He likes to humble our foes by making them seem ridiculous. As he said to me the other day, ‘Kill a man, and you cede him honor in the eyes of the gods. Laugh at him and you shame him'.”

“Most of us move through life with little chance to learn much about ourselves. We know some things we like and some things we dislike, we have a few ideas about what makes us happy, and we die in ignorance regarding anything profound within ourselves.”