Reasonable argument is impossible when authority becomes the arbiter.

. . . All these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.

I stole their future from them; I can only being to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.

It's all just fictions anyway. We do what we do and then we make up reasons for it afterward but they're never the true reasons, the truth is always just out of reach.

Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food, but the real hunger, the deep hunger, for family, for love, for belonging.

Come in, Bean. Come in Julian Delphiki, longed-for child of good and loving parents. Come in, kidnapped child, hostage of fate. Come and talk to the Fates, who are playing such clever little games with your life.