Sacredness grew like a pearl, sometimes around the most unlikely bits of grit.

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.

Love isn't like money--the more you give away the more you get back, and the more you have to give.

To take life was to understand your own death--that the Hour of the Huntsman also came for you.

Leading means running fast enough to keep ahead of your people.

A libertarian is someone who can believe that the police are no more than a gang of thugs without realizing that in the absence of police, thugs will gather into gangs.

Sacredness grew like a pearl, sometimes around the most unlikely bits of grit.