You can't help whom you love, Lady. Nor can you know what it's liable to cause you to do.

How acutely sometimes the presence or absence of people mattered

It has been a hard lesson to learn, that greatness requires suffering.

If I wanted to stun anyone at dinner, I'd hit them in the face.

Teddy grinned again. 'Truths are dangerous,' he said. -'Then why are you writing them in a book?' -'To catch them between the pages,' said Teddy, 'and trap them before they disappear.' -'If they're dangerous, why not let them disappear?' -'Because when truths disappear, they leave behind blank spaces, and that is also dangerous.

Wonderful," Garan grumbled when he'd gone. "We'll grow a reputation for our kindness to lawbreakers.

That was what they did with themselves, those two Gracelings, along with a small band of friends: They stirred up trouble on a serious scale—bribery, coercion, sabotage, organized rebellion—all directed at stopping the worst behavior of the world’s most seriously corrupt kings.