Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

When I was a wee little kid,” remarked Roic, watching over their shoulders, “there was a time I thought that any skinny old man I saw was my grandfather. It was pretty confusing.

Don’t wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you’re best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.

Not that I haven’t leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It’s sustaining the altitude that defeats me.

Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it’ll look on your next resume.”On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You...

Lately I have come to believe that the principle difference between Heaven and Hell is the company you keep there….

The real unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, without anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but...

If only one didn’t know that at the secret heart of all such organizations, corporations and governments alike, it still came down to a finite number of fallible people talking to each other . . . ​

The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as...

Lakewalker legends say the gods abandoned the world when the first malice came. And that they will return when the earth is entirely cleansed of its spawn. If you believe in gods.””Do you?””I believe they...

The gods’ most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.

Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. “The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves.

[Koudelka] looked back, “You?! I know you! You trust beyond reason!”[Cordelia] met his eyes steadily, “Yes, it’s how I get results beyond hope, as you may recall.

You must learn to give, from sufficiency, not only take, from neediness.

When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.

But though you’d never starve your body to wasting and still expect to go on, you starve your heart, yet act as though you can still draw on it forever without the debt ever coming...

Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.

Lord X was a tyrant, not a revolutionary. He wanted to take over the system, not change it.

This wasn’t prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods.Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the...

He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities.

It’s a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn’t even know you were aiming for.

Royse Bergon: “I’ve seen your integrity in action. It…widened my world. I’d been raised by my father, who is a prudent, cautious man, always looking for men’s hidden, selfish motivations. No one can cheat him....

everyone has their folding-point, Miles. Their mortal vulnerability. Some just keep it in a nonstandard location.

(Watching her) was a little like watching water lilies; rather more like smelling a dinner he was not allowed to eat. Was it possible to be starved for so long as to forget the taste...

It was hell to be so tired, and still care.

God save me from another such victory.

And the Bastard grant us… in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain’s peak, the...

I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.

I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.

It’s true that if your religion failed to deliver a miracle, that a human sacrifice would certainly follow.””Ah…quite. You are a man of acute insight.””That’s not insight. That’s a personal guarantee.

That civet-jasmine blend you’re wearing tonight absolutely clashes with the third-level formal style of your dress, you know.