Costis bowed stiffly. “I am here to make sure that you stay in bed, Your Majesty, because if this offends you and you order me summarily executed, it is no loss. Politically speaking.

Sometimes, if you want to change a man's mind, you have to change the mind of the man next to him first.

The queen was settling on the edge of the bed, ungainly with hesitation and at the same time exquisite in her grace, like a heron landing in a treetop.

I was not so comfortable with my new authority that I could say 'We eat the chicken now!' but the magus had seen that I was considering it.

But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness.

He didn't marry you to become king. He became king because he wanted to marry you.

It isn't an easy thing to give your loyalty to someone you don't know, especially when that person chooses to reveal nothing of himself.

Will there be poppy juice in it?" Phresine shook her head. "Good. My wife and I agreed that only my wine was to be poisoned.

Then come out," said the king, helping him, "knowing you'll never die of a fall unless the god himself drops you.

If I am the pawn of the gods, it is because they know me so well, not because they make my mind up for me.

Her queen danced like a flame in the wind, and the mercurial king like the weight at the center of the earth.

Job understood that he was nothing more than God’s invention and so too was his suffering

The line of head is strong, but the line of heart is weak. And most importantly, the line of life is short. The stars do not seem to be right.

The real heroes are those ones who are forgotten, forsaken and remain the nameless ones, in the history of time.

The one thing about the business of entertainment is that you have to learn patience.

Can you remember? when we thought the poets taught how to live?

You have to be able to cut off from the ballet and relax, or you have anxiety dreams at night, worrying about what you're going to dance the next day, going over every little detail.

Goodbyes are sad, no matter what the promise of tomorrow is.

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.

I do have a delicate side.

I'm called away by particular business - but I leave my character behind me