When the playful me shows up, I am ready to be a serious learner … a culture of playfulness is closely related to the capacity to learn.

It may be that the night will close over us in the end, but I believe that morning will come again. Morning always grows out of the darkness, though maybe not for the people who saw the sun go down. We are the Lantern Bearers, my friend; for us to keep something burning, to carry what light we can forward into the darkness and the wind.

I have a special "ah, here I am again, I know exactly what they are going to have for breakfast" feeling when I get back into Roman Britain, which is very nice.

We shall have made such a blaze that men will remember us on the other side or the dark.

...extraordinarily beautiful, and slightly out of focus.

And it came to Marcus suddenly that slaves very seldom whistled. They might sing, if they felt like it or if the rhythm helped their work, but whistling was in some way different; it took a free man to make the sort of noise Esca was making.

When the playful me shows up, I am ready to be a serious learner … a culture of playfulness is closely related to the capacity to learn.