We worship…the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do. We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can’t even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another? [p. 176]

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

You'd never killed anyone. Then you had.

Weariness, sometimes more than anything else, can bring an end to war.

You have to be afraid for it to count as bravery.

What man would dare believe that all he planned might come to pass?

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?