As he watches the sun rise, what grieves him is that he failed her. He thinks of the terror she felt. They tell him it was quick, as if that will somehow confine the horror.

It's not the dead even. They're gone. Nothing you can do about that. It's what's left behind - the echo. These woods you're walking through. There are some old timers who think a sound echoes here forever. Makes sense when you think about it. That Billingham kid. I'm sure he screamed. He screams, it echoes, just bounces back and forth, the sound getting smaller and smaller, but never entirely disappearing. Like a part of his is still calling out, even now.

And yet, said Poirot, suppose an accident-Ah, no, my friend-From your point of view it would be regrettable, I agree. But nevertheless let us just for one moment suppose it. Then, perhaps, all these here are linked together - by death.

Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people

The rule is that if they have a weapon and want to take you someplace else, it is so they can kill you slower--Peter

That night, the Raka conspirators had plenty of news to report, particularly Ochobu. Aly had not known that the mages of the Chain had been laboring to eliminate any mages who had worked magic on the Crown's behalf. So far they had killed seven of the most powerful.Chelaol would call this count of the dead another —good start,' Aly thought grimly. This crude business of counting up lives taken struck her as a bad idea. It took the horror from death. When Ochobu named four mages on Lombyn who had had been killed in the streets of their towns, it had been about numbers, not lives. Maybe this is how you become a Rittevon, she thought. You get used to the dead being described as numbers, not fathers or daughters or grandparents.She turned to Dove when Ochobu finished, 'don't ever be like this,' she urged. 'don't think that it doesn't matter if you only hear of murder as a number. If you keep it at a distance.

Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.

Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.

Hope is a slighter, tougher thing even than trust, he thought, pacing his room as the soundless, vague lightning flashed overhead. In a good season one trusts life; in a bad season one only hopes, But they are of the same essence: they are the mind's indispensable relationship with other minds, with the world, and with time. Without trust, a man lives, but not a human life; without hope, he dies. When there is no relationship, where hands do not touch, emotion atrophies in void and intelligence goes sterile and obsessed. Between men the only link left is that of owner to slave, or murderer to victim.

There's no way you can kill someone and get to the other side of the experience unchanged.

Murder is like potato chips: you can't stop with just one.

Heaven is comfort, but it's still not living.

For some strange reason murder has always seemed more respectable than fornication. Few people are shocked when they hear God described as the God of Battles; but what an outcry there would be if anyone spoke of him as the God of Brothels.

Death by drink driving is the only socially acceptable form of homicide.

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.

A person is more likely to be hit or killed in his or her own home by another family member than anywhere else or by anyone else.

It takes two to make a murder. There are born victims, born to have their throats cut, as the cut-throats are born to be hanged.

As a test of the closeness of your relationship with the world, sex could never be a patch on being murdered. (That's when someone really does risk his life for you.)

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

Kill a man and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.