The real unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, without anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present - they are real.

Miles is... Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine.

One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.

I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given.

I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.

There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing.

His outflung hands traced over the threads of his rug, passed loop by loop through some patient woman's hands. Or maybe she hadn't been patient. Maybe she'd been tired, or irritated, or distracted, or hungry, or angry. Maybe she had been dying. But her hands had kept moving, all the same.