In youth,' he said, speaking as if from a great distance, 'we believe, and the death of belief forces us to disavow all belief. But that disavowal, time softens, and if we do not believe, we hope. Belief is easier to kill, somehow, and its death easier to bear.

i'm never going to understand the Barrani." "You needn't sound so morose, Lord Kaylin. They are unlikely to understand you either." "Yes, but I'm unlikely to try to kill them for fun.

Success and failure are two edges of the same blade, two sides of the same coin. To fear one is to forever deny the possibility of the other.

It was true: hope could be unkind. You opened yourself up to the worst of wounds because you wanted to believe that something good could finally happen. But if you didn't? You missed this. This intense and prefect moment in which, while the world was almost literally going to hells all around you, hope and reality blended in a single, perfect note.

Truth, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder.

If hearts really could sink, Kaylin's was busily rearranging her internal organs.

I don't make the laws, I just enforce them." "Then remind me to introduce a new set of laws, since the ones we have clearly assume a level of common sense that's lacking.