A sickly little smile grew and died on his mouth like a fungus.

Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.

I'm a very friendly socialist.

There are only so many ways to experience pain. There are an almost limitless number of ways to inflict it, but the pain itself, initially vividly distinct in all its specifications, becomes, inevitably, just pain.

I'd never understood the injunction not to regret anything, couldn't see how that wasn't cowardice.

Anything for gold and experience.

Old stories would tell how Weavers would kill each other over aesthetic disagreements, such as whether it was prettier to destroy an army of a thousand men or to leave it be, or whether a particular dandelion should or should not be plucked. For a Weaver, to think was to think aesthetically. To act - to Weave - was to bring about more pleasing patterns. They did not eat physical food: they seemed to subsist on the appreciation of beauty.