I was very low and I had to achieve something. Without the challenge, I would have gone stark raving mad.

This group had a kind of dark glamour within the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty.

Parminder kept her unwept tears locked tightly inside where they seemed to undergo an alchemical transformation, returning to the outer world as lava slides of rage.

This was their first encounter with the fact that a full stomach meant good spirits; an empty one, bickering and gloom.

Birth and death: there was the same consciousness of heightened existence and of her own elevated importance

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

I definitely know that love is the most powerful thing of all.