Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view?

How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?

A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.

I'm not getting it all sorted, she worried. I'm not getting it right. You are brilliant, the Voice reassured her. It is imperfect. So are all things trapped in time. You are brilliant, nonetheless. How fortunate for Us that We thirst for glorious souls rather than faultless ones, or We should be parched indeed, and most lonely in Our perfect righteousness. Carry on imperfectly, shining Ista.

We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.

People give themselves to you, in their talking, and in other ways, if you are quiet and patient and let them, and not in such a damned rush to give yourself to them you go bat-blind and deaf.

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.