A vocation is not something you slap on, like a coat of paint, and change whenever you want. A vocation is built into you. You have no choice. If you try to do something else, you fail.

Ellen could have killed me," Jack said quietly, "but she didn't. She saved my life." "How come?" Fitch demanded. "After all this?" Ellen turned scarlet and stared at the ground. "Maybe none of my opponents ever gave me flowers before," she mumbled.

Hope is a dangerous thing, Raisa thought. Once kindled, it's hard to put out. It makes wise people into fools.

His aster-blue eyes shown out from a face blackened by bruises and soot, his fair hair glittering in the firelight. Dressed all in black, silhouetted against flame, he looked rather like a demon, raised from the dead, trading for souls on the other side.

The human mind had a remarkable ability both to discount what it sees and make reality conform to expectation.

The only way to get what you want is to make them more afraid of you than they are of each other.

He expects nothing, she thought, because he's never had anything. And nothing was expected of him. He was free in a way she never would be.