Everything I said he agreed with, which was trying, and his flute playing would make the deaf wince, but I think the real problem with Hyacinth was that he reminded me of myself. He read poetry. He flinched at loud noises. In addition to having no musical skills, he had no martial skills. He avoided any situation that might require physical effort on his part. Seeing him, I found it no wonder that my father despised me.

"Before you make a decision," he said, "I want you to know that I love you."

Why did you come if not to murder my king?" "I came to steal his magus." "You can't," said the magus in question. "I can steal anything," Eugenides corrected him, "even with one hand.

Are you badly hurt?" "Hideously," said the king, without sounding injured at all. "I am disemboweled. My insides may in an instant become my outsides as I stand here before you.

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.

A thief never makes a noise by accident.

She's like a prisoner inside stone walls, and every day the walls get a little thicker, the doorways a little narrower.