I don’t duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange.

Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that and walk away. But that's hard

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

The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.

As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor

There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.

Escapist literature gets a bad rap. But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.