He laughed, tried to make it into a cough, inhaled at exactly the wrong moment, and then really did cough.

Perhaps it is a human thing, to look upon such beauty and fail to encompass it.

I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.

He looked at her rather as a man looks at a problem that he would very much prefer to do without. She supposed it was a distinction of a sort to be a harassment to a king.

Roses are for love. Not silly sweet-hearts' love but the love that makes you and keeps you whole, love that gets you through the worst your life'll give you and that pours out of you when you're given the best instead.

Oh, why does compassion weaken us?' It doesn't, really...Somewhere where it all balances out-don't the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live?-if we could go there, you could see it doesn't.It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here, like an ant at the foot of an oak tree. He doesn't have a clue that it's a tree; it's the beginning of the wall round the world, to him.

My kind [vampires] does not surprise easily," he said. "You surprised me, this morning. I have thus used up my full quota of shock and consternation for some interval." I stared at him. "You made a *joke*." "I have heard this kind of thing may happen.