Sharon Shinn

“Are you asking me if there is a god?' he said, still in that soft voice. 'All I can say is, I believe there is. I feel him when I sing. He has responded to my prayers countless times. He guides my actions and he dwells in my heart. I know he is there.”

“A truth that no one knows is still the truth.”

“There is nothing but heartache for a coru woman and a hunti man," she said, deliberately contrary. "He cannot control her and she cannot change him.""He never fails her and she always moves him," Darien corrected. "She can trust his strength, and he can be lifted by her joy.”

“You have not traveled enough," she said. "Or you'd know that every journeymakes its own map across your heart.”

“Your wedding completely changes the direction of your life, you know, no matter how greatly you desire it. I think that moment of doubt and faintness comes from all those imagined and now impossible futures all pressing in on you at once. It is your last chance to experience them, you see, and they all want to be lived at that moment.”

“But I am king. And the well-being of my kingdom depends on my sound judgment and clear head. And those things depend on my state of happiness. And I have known for a long time that my state of happiness depends on you.”

“You must welcome bounty whenever it comes, hunti man. It is often inconvenient. But if you insist on accepting it only when it suits your schedule, you will find yourself very poor.”

“You almost threw it back!' she repeated, and her voice filled with mock horror.'You foolish boy! Are you always so careless with items of value?''No,' he said, abruptly sober. 'I know what matters. And I never throw those things away. I hold on to them as long as I can.”

“I've remembered that most of life is about small, essential connections, so unobtrusive, so elastic, that you scarcely realize they're actually holding you together. The big ones-the great, grand emotional bonds-those are the ones that break, the ones that fail you, the ones that give way and send you careening toward the foot of the bleak and jagged canyon. It's the tough, gnarled, unadorned ties that really do bind, that never let you fall all the way down into darkness.”

“He leaned upon her as if there was no other support anywhere in the world, and she held him as if she would undertake no other task for all eternity.”

“So do I wish I was to be king? That is not a question I ask myself. I ask myself, Would I be a good king? Would I be quick witted and generous of spirit and full of that boundless energy? Or would I be clumsy and stupid and dulled by my own prejudices? I try to be a good man, since I am alive at all, and hope that that teaches me what I would need to know if I was ever faced with a higher challenge.”