Time went by with all the speed of a sleepless night. - Scott Lynch

Liquor does this? Even after you're sober?
A cruel joke, isn't it? The gods put a price tag on everything, it seems.

Is this man, ah, senile?
He's absolutely competent, she answered coldly.
I assure you I am, roared Cordo. Anger changed his countenance utterly. And I will not be put off from business by assassins in my own bedroom! Now, you will either kill me immediately or negotiate the price of my release!

Most of us find it starkly ludicrous that the height of all possible ambition, to the ungifted, must be to drape oneself in crowns and robes.