Tanith Lee on Time

"I had made vows and to spare, but the present cannot be ruled forever by the past."

"I see you laugh, and rightly so. What is this silly old fool rambling on about? Good for you. Never respect years, only deeds."

"The year was woven on the loom, finished and folded away upon the pile of other years in the tall chests of Time."

"Lir chiseled at the stone. It would take a month to make a perceptible impression on it. He had a few hours. Work harder, then."

"Dust had dimmed only a fraction, not enough. Decay had brushed with its rotten fingers not nearly all it should. It was an enchanted sweet, stuck in the throat of time."

"I woke in the dawn. The plains of the Wilderness were exploding into light. It was the first hour of day, one of the two most beautiful hours of the desert, where sunrise and sunset are the queen and king."

"I am alone. No one stands beside me. I have no Dark Prince to ride in my chariot, to walk with me, to hold me to him. I have no one. And yet. I myself, at last, I have myself. And to me, at this time, it seems enough. It seems more, much more, than enough."

"A few old men began to say there had been a winter like this when they were warriors, and that it was a year of catastrophe and disappointment. But old men will ever spin this wheel. The summers were always hotter and the winters colder in the days of their strength, and the air thick with epic drama and portent."