I have made calculations that would beggar your soul. What is it that villains always say at the end of stories? You and I are more alike than you think? Well,” the Marquess took September’s hand in hers and very gently kissed it. “We are. Oh, how alike we are! I feel very warmly towards you, and I only want to protect you, as I wish someone had protected me. Come, September, look out the window with me. It’s not a difficult thing. A show of faith, let’s call it.

Where there is a Key, there is yet hope.

If I stop, I shall sink and die. That's the way I'm made. I have to keep going always, and even when I get where I'm going, I'll have to keep on. That's living.

I perceive that you have a cruel heart, my child. It lies within your breast like a smoldering blade, hissing steam at me.

I hope, in years to come, I shall hold my heart up and it will be a pane of clear glass, through which I see all, but nothing is distorted.

I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God?

Don’t worry,” Marya whispered, kissing his forehead. “My old bones will follow yours soon enough.