Getting information out of them was like extracting gold from ore—a lot of labour and time, and why bother to do it when you know there’s a store jus… - Karen Lord

"Never?" he said, dismayed.
"Never," she reiterated firmly.
He nodded, pretending to be resigned, but secretly he thought that there were always ways to get around "never."

Paama sat up slowly, moving as cautiously as if facing a lion who had just declared his intention not to pounce, but to have a friendly chat instead.

Chaos was a far subtler force than most people realised. It would be so easy to sense if it threw off thunderbolts or sent barely sensed thrummings through the fabric of reality, but it was nothing more than the possible made probable. It did not break or bend any laws of nature or tip the balance of the universe.