"The waves were indifferent, and the wind; and the rocks neither knew nor cared who owned them, Christ’s Vicar or an English King."

“A death was more than an ending; it was like pulling a thread from a richly patterned cloth.”

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

“She curled her lip. She had discovered cynicism.”

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

““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.”

“He like the Church he serves is blind and empty and vainglorious. This God they prattle on about, where’s His justice, where’s His compassion? Does it please Him to see dying people hounded in His name, does He snigger at His bumbling priests, is He satisfied when men drop dead chopping stone out for His temples, twisted little God dying tepid-faced on a cross....She thought, I’ll go out and look for other gods, and maybe they’ll be better and anyway they can’t be worse.”