Start writing sooner. Don't wait for permission. Don't hesitate.

My blood will only buy you that fool's regard. I will pay a high price for you to be respected by a churl. Nothing bought with blood is worth having, young man.

Do you not see how strange and wonderful that is? That all history balances on an affair of the human heart?

I thought we had lost you. I thought we'd done something worse than let you die.' His old arms were tight and strong about me. I was kind to the old man. I did not tell him they had.

What a man can take with a sword, a woman can give by her flesh alone. Life.

If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss. From the sharp pain of immediate berevement, both the Prince and I passed into the gray days of numb bewilderment and waiting. So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it.

When both my editors say 'This is really bad, you need to change this,' I ignore that at my peril.