All things that are, are ours. But we must care. For if we do not care, we do not exist. If we do not exist, then there is nothing but blind oblivion. And even oblivion must end someday. Lord, will you grant me just a little time? For the proper balance of things. To return what was given. For the sake of prisoners and the flight of birds. Death took a step backwards. It was impossible to read expression in azrael's features. Death glanced sideways at the servants. Lord, what can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the reaper man?

Anyway, why would you trust anything written down? She certainly didn't trust "Mothers of Borogravia!" and that was from the government. And if you couldn't trust the government, who could you trust? Very nearly everyone, come to think of it.

Oh, there's plenty of reasons. I just don't know which one.

The 'New Testament', now, I quite liked. Jesus had a lot of good things to say, and as for his father, he must have been highly thought of by the community to work with wood - a material that couldn't have been widely available in Palestine.

By the time you've reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

These weren't encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a longbow's arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred yards away instead of the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed.

If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.