The twin gods, Necessity and Chance, walked among the stars. What needed to be, was; what might be, sometimes was.

Claude rubs the back of his neck and wrinkles his nose, about to tell me he was never sad. I believe this is called bravado and is not limited to lawyers, or even men, although that combination makes it almost unavoidable.

Metaphor is awkward, but emotion, by its nature, leaves you no more scalable approach.

We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.

Orma moved a pile of books off a stool for me but seated himself directly on another stack. This habit of his never ceased to amuse me. Dragons no longer hoarded gold; Comonot's reforms had outlawed it. For Orma and his generation, knowledge was treasure. As dragons through the ages had done, he gathered it and then he sat on it.

If I could keep a single moment for all time, that would be the one. I became the very air; I was full of stars.

Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.