My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned.

The world could bring you poison in a jewelled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn't know which of them it was.

There was some sadness in how that could happen, Tai thought: falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had? But if you didn't change at least a little, where were the passages of a life? Didn't learning, changing, sometimes mean letting go of what had once been seen as true?

One didn't stop to talk with creatures from one's nightmares.

In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.

Why did becoming accustomed to something have to render its pleasures stale.

The military preferred - invariably - those who could be readily defined, assigned roles, understood, and controlled.