The Mackenzie had never met folk so poor in story and song and legends, and it moved him to a pity that pricked at his eyes. Without that tapestry of colour and words and ritual, what was life but eating and mating, sleeping and moving your bowels? All of them good and necessary, but not enough; and they themselves needed that framework too, to give them meaning.

And the first king was a lucky soldier.

Bad writers have influences. Good writers steal.

Because those events are so real that they cast their shadow forward and backwards through all time, whenever men think of these matters at all. Even if they are mired in ignorace, they will see...fragments of the Truth, as men imprisoned in a cave see shadows cast by the sun. Likewise, all men derive their moral intuitions from God; how not? There is no other source, just as there is no other way to make a wheel than to make it round.

I'm always diplomatic when heavily outnumbered by armed strangers.

Nothing's free and only the cheaper things can be bought with money.

There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot.