Like running the hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can't afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you're dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them ... and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they're gone.

I have never resisted the lord in my life, and I never will. But I'm not so hungry for dialogue with him that I have to make up his part as well as my own.

If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal.

I have lived in the only decades I could have lived in, and hope to live through at least a few more.

Intellectual understanding does not always bring visceral belief.

Where loyalty bound creatures together, they became something larger, something new and whole and inexplicable.

You take a step, then another. That's the journey. But to take a step with your eyes open is not a journey at all, it's a remaking of your own mind.