"'Come on, Rahotep. How do you think Royal Envoy Nakht gets his information about events in the north, and in the war? The army has its intelligence, and the palace has its own, too. The days when an invasion or an attack took place and no one heard about it for months are long gone. This war’s all about speed and information, and you can be sure Nakht has a very efficient system. The problem is, each system is always trying to infiltrate the other. And there’s always the danger of spies.’"

“Rhetoric is a dangerous art. It is the manipulation of the difference, one might say the distance, between truth and image And in our times, that distance has become the means by which power is exercised Rhetoric has been a force for persuasion since man began to speak, and to convince his enemy that he was indeed his friend.”

“For a world with so much sun we live in a dark place, in a dark time.”

“And you must never speak of what I have just told you. For this is a great secret. And great secrets bring with them great responsibilities.”

“Once wine was the means to artificial happiness; now things are much more sophisticated, and what was one of the great secrets of medicine has become the only bliss many find in this life.”

“My dear friend, the world is really one vast marketplace. No one cares where a man is from as long as he has gold in his pocket, or something you want. And the remarkable thing is this: the wars have only encouraged demand, trade has actually boomed in these difficult years. The ships are full, everyone is happy. War and politics are irrelevant, unless the great flow of trade is disturbed.”

“We need strong, educated women to help us build a better world.”