“Etna! 'tis amid you, visited by Venus
On your lava fields placing her candid feet,
When a sad stillness thunders wherein the flame dies.
I hold the queen!”

“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet.”

“Consume hostility;
employ your weapon in this meeting-place of surging enmity!
Insurgent feet shall not outrun
multiplied flames, O Sun.”

“The press really is not doing its job of holding [the candidates'] feet to the fire. … The tough questions are not what are you in favor of, but how are you going to get it through Congress?”

“… her queen danced like a flame in the wind, and the mercurial king like the weight at the center of the earth…”

“Is that an ear trumpet in your lava-lava?”

“You love the thunder and you love the rain
You know your hunger like you know your name
I know you wonder how you ever came
To be a woman in love with a man in search of the flame”

“She had great knowledge about India. I again got startled when the Queen asked about my house in Bangalore. She said she had twice passed by my house at Nandi Hills during her visit to the place with the Maharaja of Mysore, who told her it belonged to the Elayaraja of Travancore.”

“You are handed your job as the old king or queen dies… It is not a life sentence, but a life of service.”

“It will be like the end of time when the Queen dies.”