...That he'd seen...two people, a young man and a woman, sitting on invisible furniture with their feet up, reading books and eating chocolates.

Relius looked away. "He said that you...cried," he said softly. "But not that he cried as well," said the queen, amused at the memory. "We were very lachrymose... would you like to hear more romance of the evening? He told me the Guard should be reduced by half, and I threw an ink jar at his head." "Is that when he cried?" "He ducked," said Attolia dryly. "I had not pictured you for a fishwife." "Lo, the transforming power of love.

He couldn't offend the gods with a pointed stick.

And the Earth had no name. The gods know themselves and have no need of names. It is man who names all things, even gods.

Being six feet off the ground does give one a sense of superiority.

She was the stone-faced queen, then and ever after. She had needed the mask to rule, and she had been glad to have it. She wondered if Eugenides was glad of his.

I grieved, but a part of me felt a lightening of a burden that I had carried all my life: that I could never be worthy of them, that I would always disappoint or fail them. As an unknown slave in the fields of the baron, I knew the worst was over. I had failed them. At least I could not do so again