I said, “When you are on your deathbed, Erran, pray that you never meet me in the place you are going to.” - Tanith Lee

Now I saw braves hang themselves with amulets, leave tidbits for spirits, and still take an arrow in the neck. I, worshiping nothing and bribing nothing with prayers, rode among an enemy unscathed, scything them like summer wheat.

The sky powdered her cheeks with rouge, and the forest was mantled in crimson. Then the face of the sky altered, became that of a beautiful black damsel having no wish for rouge, but only for a net of stars and a piece of silver moon to hang on her forehead. And the forest mantled in sable, whispered with waters and the lyres of the grasshopper, and with the turning pages of leaves, and the unheard footsteps of unseen things.

Now, when the man struck you, if you had only said to him, 'strike me again for good measure, I have no quarrel with you,' perhaps he would have struck you, or perhaps not, but the affair would have been finished with, and you at liberty to go on as you wished."
"Master, I see it is a parable, but nevertheless, some men, being allowed to strike another unchecked, will make a habit of striking there. Is that not also an interruption?"
"Life is a series of blows," said the priest, "birth and death being the greatest of these, but between them, many of lesser sort. And is it possible to return or mend every smack of fate and life? Sit down beneath a storm, for if you shout at it, it will not hear you.