I wonder,” he said after a long silence, “what will happen if I open my eyes?” The Prince of the Farthest Shore, sitting beside him, answered, “You’ll see things as they are.” Alistair shuddered. Since that moment of red mouth and black teeth and pain like ripping fire, he wasn’t convinced he wanted to see things as they were. “Maybe,” he said, “I’d rather sit here in the dark.” “No, you wouldn’t,” said the Prince, and there was a smile in his voice.

Poets, as you probably are aware, are pretty keen on the emotions, turmoils, and such-like of the soul. Some might even call us empathetic.

She was the sort of person from whom one would expect to receive warm cookies, not plots.

I’m worthless,” Lionheart says. “I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t redeem my honor.” “You never can,” the Prince replies. He takes Lionheart by the shoulders and forces him to sit up, to face him. “But do you think my grace insufficient to forgive you?

For you are mine now. Forever.

I wore white peonies in my hair the night I met your father... He said I looked like a Faerie princess.

There is a moment that comes into every life when the right word, the right look even, could change the shape of the world forever. The wrong one could as well, though the resulting shape would be different. No word at all, however, and the moment slips by, and things remain unsaid that perhaps should have been said, perhaps shouldn’t, and no one can ever know for sure.

What’s the good of a story that ain’t got a happy endin’?

An awkward silence followed these bold declarations, because while both parties spoke with passion, one was a dying youth and one a ragged peasant girl with straw in her hair and no shoes. Neither was the stuff of heroes and legends, and both knew it.

She felt herself caught up in the greatness of a story far too big for her mortal understanding, caught up and carried in a rolling current. But she was unafraid. For the first time, she believed she was truly alive.