Light, with its handmaiden color, was everywhere. - Tad Williams

When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren’t many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity—a waste of precious time and effort.

The last thing a drunkard loses, you see, is his cunning: it outlasts his soul by a long season.

Empires were like seawalls, he thought sadly, even those which embodied the best of hopes. The tide of chaos beat at them, and as soon as no one was shoring up the stones any more...