A death was more than an ending; it was like pulling a thread from a richly patterned cloth. — Keith Roberts

She stopped dead; and the look in her eyes showed plainly she’d just received the import of a crude lesson in economics.

The years had a way of piling themselves one atop the next, unnoticed and uncounted; that was how young men turned into old ones.

“Confession,” he said, “must be sincere. It must come from the heart. False confession, made to avoid the pain of Questioning, is useless to Church and God alike. Our aim is salvation; the salvation of the souls of these poor wretches in our charge, if necessary by the breaking of their bodies. Set against this, all else is straw in the wind.”