He wanted a home desperately. He was close to the point where he would take a mattress in Hell if the Devil… — Tad Williams

“Do you get tired, singing?” she asked.

Gan Itai laughed quietly. “Does a mother grow tired raising her children? Of course, but it is what I do.”

She knew that life was but a long struggle against disorder, and that disorder was the inevitable winner.

Sometimes you men are like lizards, sunning on the stones of a crumbled house, thinking: “what a nice basking-spot someone built for me.”