I hate the way, once you start to know someone, care about them, their behavior can distress you, even when it's unreasonable and not your fault, even if you were really trying to be careful, tactful.

What is any of this to us? Time is endless and ours. Love and Death are only the games we play in it.

The humble were the elect of God. Did not the priests teach so, in their gemmed, kingly robes, from their towering pulpits?

He sat by her, watching every gesture she made, as if he would paint her portrait afterward.

Madness. I did not get myself born to die. I have better things to do.

I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.

Condemned and executioner with aren't coupled in a primitive rite.