"You're only going to tire yourself out trying. Best to quit while you're ahead. That way, no one gets hurt.''How very droll,' Antoinette said, drawing close to the bars of the cage. 'Because I was going to say precisely the same thing about your little revolution.''It's hardly a revolution if the man in charge condones it,' Troius said.'It's amusing that you assume it is that man who controls Thremedon,' Antoinette snarled."

"Kalim respected me and I respected him, for the sole reason Rook did not respect me, because we were very different."

"I wouldn't even stoop so low as to pull the same trick on him he's pulled on me, because my girl was better than that. If you killed scum, you were scum. It was good enough for me but she was too good for it- too good for me- and always had been."

"There'd always been an understanding between Havemercy and me; that we'd kill any man who came between us. I was holding up my end of the bargain now that she couldn't uphold hers."

"You or me, I'm afraid, and I'm very attached to myself."

"We should all be lucky enough to make something in this world half as fucked up as we were ourselves, something we could leave behind."

"That was another thing about boys: No one assumed the blew a gasket for any reason other than they were just really upset. They were allowed to just be, and nobody blamed where the moon was in its cycle, or whether or not they had the ill fortune of leaking from their privates. It was plain unfair."

"And when were theories useless? I was a thinker, not a fighter, and the world was always in need of thoughts."