It's funny, because in deference to conventional wisdom, I spent my struggling writer years trying to suppress my naturally baroque literary voice and write clean, spare prose. I finally gave up and embraced my baroque tendencies when I wrote the Kushiel series.

Truly, it is in loss that we learn a thing's true value.

And having once chosen, never to seek to return to the crossroads of that decision-for even if one chooses wrongly, the choice cannot be unmade.

Soon never comes soon enough to a young child.

Yes my lord, but questions are dangerous, for they have answers

It is a comfort, in anguish, to be reminded of the scale of one's own troubles against the mighty breadth of the world.

Battle for the sake of honor may be a fine thing for bards to sing of, but it is no way to preserve one's homeland