David Eddings

Zakath stared at the floor. 'I suddenly feel very helpless,' he admitted, 'and I don't like the feeling. I've been rather effectively dethroned, you know. This morning I was the Emperor of the largest nation on earth; this afternoon, I'm going to be a vagabond.'You might find it refreshing,' Silk told him lightly.Shut up, Kheldar,' Zakath said almost absently. He looked back at Polgara. 'You know something rather peculiar?'What's that?'Even if I hadn't given my word, I'd still have to go to Kell. It's almost like a compulsion. I feel as if I'm being driven, and my driver is a blindfolded girl who's hardly more than a child.'There are rewards,' she told him.Such as what?'Who knows? Happiness, perhaps.'He laughed ironically. 'Happiness has never been a driving ambition of mine, Lady Polgara, not for a long time now.'You may have to accept it anyway,' She smiled. 'We aren't allowed to choose our rewards any more than we are our tasks. Those decisions are made for us.

As soon as a friendship passed a certain point - some obscure and secret boundary - a woman quite automatically became overwhelmed by a raging compulsion to complicate things.

Life__ much more pleasing when you don__ have to spend all of your time thinking.

His stories were not always new, but there was in the telling of them a special kind of magic. His voice could roll like thunder or hush down into a zepherlike whisper. He could imitate the voices of a dozen men at once; whistle so like a bird that the birds themselves would come to him to hear what he had to say; and when when he imitated the howl of a wolf, the sound could raise the hair on the backs of his listeners' necks and strike a chill into their hearts like the depths of a Drasnian winter. He could make the sound of rain and of wind and even, most miraculously, the sound of snow falling.

You won't be able to do it wrong, Durnik--any more than you'd be able to lie or cheat or steal. It's built into you to do it right, so don't worry about it.""That's all very well for you to say, Mistress, Pol," he replied, "but if you don't mind, I will worry about it just a bit--privately of course.

The whole world is beautiful, Belgarion' Eriond assured him in response to that unspoken thought. 'You just have to know how to look at it

Don__ throw good ideas away until you__e considered all of your options.

He can come up with the most exotic things I__e ever seen or heard of every time he blinks his eyes.

It__ common knowledge that the "church" is nothing more than an invention of the priesthood designed to swindle the ordinary people of the empire out of just about everything they own.

Life without any wonder left in it is flat and stale.

We're living in momentous times, Garion. The events of a thousand years and more have all focused on these very days. The world, I'm told, is like that. Centuries pass when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous importance take place that the world is never the same again." I think that if I had my choice, I'd prefer one of those quiet centuries," Garion said glumly. Oh, no," Silk said, his lips drawing back in a ferretlike grin. "Now's the time to be alive - to see it all happen, to be a part of it. That makes the blood race, and each breath is an adventure.

Any time there's something so ridiculously dangerous that no rational human being would try it, they send for me.' --Garion

Why do some trees stay green while others change their color?___ertain trees need to show off, dear. I__ sure that my big brother could explain why it happens. Dahlaine loves to explain things, and he can be very tedious about it. I prefer simpler answers. The trees are sad because summer__ almost over.

The stars were better company anyway. They were very beautiful, and they almost never snored.

It__ different," Sorgan__ younger cousin Torl declared, gesturing at the glorious sunset late that afternoon. "It__ pretty enough, I suppose, but it__ not too much like the sunsets out at sea. Mountains seem to do peculiar things to the sky.""It__ the clouds, Captain Torl," Keselo explained. "Most of the time, I__ imagine, the clouds out over the sea sort of plod along from here to there. When they come to mountains, though, they have to climb up one side and then slide down the other. That sort of scrambles them, so they__e thicker in some places and thinner in others. That__ why we see so many different shades of red in a mountain sunset.

Nobles and peasants marry early. Businessmen tend to wait.

...only in the surrender of the light could the darkness prevail.

I thought you said you were the one in charge!" Ce'Nedra exclaimed.I lied." Silk said. "It's a vice I have.