Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.

The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert. Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last. Even the sun goes down.

When I was 18 years old, in a more innocent time, my first backpacking trip through Europe, I sneaked into the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum after nightfall and spent several hours in there avoiding the guards patrolling.

Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.

A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done . . . something.

What mortal knew the way their fate line would run?

Unless the perfidious wolves have the temerity to disobey the High King's plans, we should meet Shalhassan's forces by the Latham in mid-wood with the wolves between us. If they aren't,' Diarmuid concluded, 'we blame anyone and everything except the plan.