Patricia A. McKillip

"Water has its moods, flowing or still; it can lure you like a lover, or look as bleak as a broken heart."

"I do not want to choose which one of you I must love or hate. Here, I am free to do neither. I want no part of your bitterness."

"“The Riddle Master himself lost the key to his own riddles one day,” he said in his deep, reed-pure voice, “and he found it again at the bottom of his heart."

"“Love is what we say it is,” she said fiercely. “That’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows about it. I’m sorry."

"I didn’t know anymore what love meant, or why we were not all better off without it."

"What concern of mine are your affairs? Or Coren’s? What kind of peace would there be in me or in my house if I took interest in the wars and feuds that you weave in the courts below? I do not understa…"

"I was running from my own thoughts as much as anything. I simply wanted to untangle myself from the web I had touched. A single, sticky, quivering strand of it was all I needed to warn me away. I did …"

"He kissed her anyway, lightly on the cheek, before she turned to get her coat, thinking how long he had known her and how little he knew her and how little he knew of how much or little there was in h…"