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

I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken.

Did I become court composer through masterful procrastination? Hardly!

It is permissible to be the god of your own metaphors.

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.

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.

And I realized a wondrous truth: that knowledge could be our treasure, that there were things humankind knew that we did not, that our conquest need not comprise taking and killing, but could consist of our mutual conquest of ignorance and distrust.