“The Sin Washer had died centuries ago, and His legacy seemed often to be in the accumulation of connections and power more than the distribution of emotional or spiritual ease. She kept that thought to herself. Wisdom came in many forms, and silence was often the most useful.”

“Eugenie thought of this often. Men had told her many sweet things about herself, but never before that she was important. It was the nicest compliment she had ever received.”

“A few centuries ago… the indigenous and often primitive architectural forms of that time had become suited to local climate through a long process of trial and error.”

“More often than not, a hero’s most epic battle is the one you never see; it’s the battle that goes on within him or herself.”

“The thought came and went, more wish than thought. Maria wasn’t good at considering her own emotions. Most of the time the girl found it hard to believe that what she felt might matter.”

“I had thought Felicity dangerous a moment ago, when she felt powerful. I was wrong. Wounded and powerless, she is more dangerous than I could imagine.”

“She had always liked this image of herself as too much trouble, as different, and she sometimes thought of it as a carapace that kept her safe.”

“She had been restless and forceful, a killer of the border hills, yet she had a childlike faith in love. She had given herself to him and never doubted the wisdom of the gift as he had sometimes doubted it. She had kept the faith, and she was dead.”

“In forming an estimate of sins, we are often imposed upon by imagining that the more hidden the less heinous they are.”

“She rarely saw priest—and knowing her heart sinned, was glad of that. Dreary was a church after the woodlands and hills and sounding sea. She still loved God—and was not the earth His work, and a church only man’s?—but she could not bring herself to call on Him very often.”