How can the mind be so imperfect?" she says with a smile. I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose. "It may well be imperfect," I say, "but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow." "Where do the lead?" "To oneself," I answer. "That's where the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere." I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall. "Not one thing is your fault," I comfort her.

In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount.

One listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed.

In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That's the way we live our lives.

Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than revenge,” Aomame said. “Winston Churchill. As I recall it, though, he was making excuses for the British Empire’s budget deficits. It has no moral significance.

One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year.