163
" Thank you,’ she said. And then, after another moment, holding as tightly as she could to the thing suspended there, ‘Goodbye.’
With her words the moment passed, the world moved on again: time, the flowing river, the moons. And the delicate thing that had been in the air between them - whatever it might have been named - fell, as it seemed to Jehane, softly to rest in the grass by the water.
‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘Be always blessed, on all the paths of your life. My dear.’ And then he said her name. "
― Guy Gavriel Kay , The Lions of Al-Rassan
170
" We want to sink into the tale, leave our own lives behind, find lives to encounter, even to enter for a time. We can resist being reminded of the artificer, the craft. We want to be immersed, lost, not remember what it is we are doing, having done to us, as we turn pages, look at a painting, hear a song, watch a dance.
Still, that is what is being done to us. It is.
Even so...we do turn the page, and can be lost again. And in that deep engagement we may find ourselves, or be changed, because the stories we are told become so much of what we are, how we understand our own days. "
― Guy Gavriel Kay
176
" It is in the nature of things that when we judge actions to be memorably courageous, they are invariably those that have an impact that resonates: saving other lives at great risk, winning a battle, losing one’s life in a valiant attempt to do one or the other. A death of that sort can lead to songs and memories at least as much—sometimes more—than a triumph. We celebrate our losses, knowing how they are woven into the gift of our being here. Sometimes, however, an action that might be considered as gallant as any of these will take its shape and pass unknown. No singer to observe and mourn, or celebrate, no vivid, world-changing consequence to spur the harpist’s fingers. "
― Guy Gavriel Kay , The Last Light of the Sun