However strenuously the world pulls us apart, however long the absence, we are not changed for being dashed upon the rocks. I knew you then, I know you now, I shall know you again when you come home.

Haven't you always been more than yourself? Haven't we all? We are none of us just one thing.

Claude rubs the back of his neck and wrinkles his nose, about to tell me he was never sad. I believe this is called bravado and is not limited to lawyers, or even men, although that combination makes it almost unavoidable.

Did I become court composer through masterful procrastination? Hardly!

And I realized a wondrous truth: that knowledge could be our treasure, that there were things humankind knew that we did not, that our conquest need not comprise taking and killing, but could consist of our mutual conquest of ignorance and distrust.

It is permissible to be the god of your own metaphors.

I barely noticed loneliness anymore it was my normal condition, by necessity if not by nature.

The world is seldom so simple that it hinges on us alone.

I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken.

That’s the secret to performance: conviction. The right note played tentatively still misses its mark, but play boldly and no one will question you. If one believes there is truth in art – and I do – then it’s troubling how similar the skill of performing is to lying. Maybe lying is itself a kind of art. I think about that more than I should.

Metaphor is awkward, but emotion, by its nature, leaves you no more scalable approach.

Orma moved a pile of books off a stool for me but seated himself directly on another stack. This habit of his never ceased to amuse me. Dragons no longer hoarded gold Comonot's reforms had outlawed it. For Orma and his generation, knowledge was treasure. As dragons through the ages had done, he gathered it and then he sat on it.

The truth may not be told. Here is an acceptable lie.

The world inside myself is vaster and richer than this paltry plane, peopled with mere galaxies and gods.

Was it probably true that reasoning beings were equal? It seemed more like a belief than a fact, even if I agreed with it. If you followed logic all the way back to its origin, did you inevitably end up at point of illogic, an article of faith?

The twin gods, Necessity and Chance, walked among the stars. What needed to be, was what might be, sometimes was.