Because if I see you defeated, then I think I will see Alban defeated, and if that happens, none of us can go on. To guard you is to guard the heart of this land of ours.

I know it's hard for you to trust me. If I ever find the man who did this to you, who made you so frightened, I'll kill him with my bare hands. But you can trust me.

This is a long goodbye, yet not time enough. I have no aptitude for this. I cannot learn this. I would hold on, and hold on, until my hands clutch at emptiness.

Good and bad; shade and sunlight, there's but a hair's breath between them. It's all one in the end.

Even in that time of utter darkness, somewhere deep inside me the memory of love and goodness had stayed alive.

a tree is never just a tree, it is bigger and deeper and wiser than a girl like you will ever be.

I should have realized, when Cathal kissed me in the hallway, that my response was the first raindrop heralding a storm.