When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.

One day" she told them, "when you have retired, you will go to live with a family who will love you for your beauty and nothing more, and if you're very lucky there will be children, and the children will pet you and pet you and pet you. Ossin has a list, I think, of such children; he sends his hunting-staff out during the months they are not needed for that work, to look for them, and add names to the list." The fleethounds stared back at her with their enormous dark liquid eyes, and believed every word.

But it was equally clear to her that this was her fate, that she had called its name and it had come to her, and she could do nothing now but own it.

You are attempting to be logical, I suspect, and logic has little to do with government, and nothing at all to do with military administration.

Laughter went on and on, like sunlight and stone, even if the human beings who laughed did not.

One of the biggest, and possibly the biggest, obstacle to becoming a writer... is learning to live with the fact that the wonderful story in your head is infinitely better, truer, more moving, more fascinating, more perceptive, than anything you're going to manage to get down on paper.

All you did was sit there, he said. Why are you so tired? I sat very diligently, she said.