I know all about the wildness of youth, believe me. But regret has a terrible ability to follow you, long after youth has vanished

...Javel saw evil in those bright blue eyes, not malevolence but something much worse: an evil born of lack of self-awareness, an evil that didn't know it was evil and therefore could justify anything.

I'll govern for the good of the governed.I'll make sure every citizen is properly educated and doctored.I'll cease wasteful spending and ease the burden on the poor through redistribution of land and goods and taxation.

Kelsea saw now that there was something far worse than being ugly: being ugly and thinking you were beautiful.

Whatever Row thought was certainly right, and he had never needed to look any deeper than that. It maddened Katie sometimes, but there was also a relief there. Row never needed to gaze backward, wondering whether he had screwed up, whether he had been unfair. The tiny mistakes he made didn't haunt him at night.

And Kelsea wondered suddenly whether humanity ever actually changed. Did people grow and learn at all as the centuries past? Or was humanity merely like the tide, enlightenment advancing and then retreating as circumstances shifted? The most defining characteristic of the species might be lapse.

Children conceived by this woman would only be cannibalized by her womb.

History was everything, for it was in man's nature to make the same mistakes over and over.

Good stitchery," Kelsea told him. "But it will scar anyway, won't it?"The Fetch nodded. "I'm not God, nor am I the queen's surgeon." He gave her a mocking bow. "But it won't fester, and you can tell people that you took the wound in battle.""Battle?""It was a battle getting all that armor off you, and I'll tell the world so."Kelsea smiled, put down the mirror, and turned to him.

Not just a thief, but a murderer as well. Beneath the handsome man, Kelsea sensed another man, a terrible one, with a life as black as the water in an ice-covered lake. A murderer many, many times.The idea should have brought horror. Kelsea waited for a long moment, bu what came instead was an even worse realization: it didn't matter at all.