“Books are meat and medicine
and flame and flight and flower
steel, stitch, cloud and clout,
and drumbeats on the air.”

“Aristotle him selfe sayeth, that medicines be no meate to lyue withall.”

“Human minds are more full of mysteries than any written book and more changeable than the cloud shapes in the air.”

“Through the hurrying rocks the brand with thin flame takes its flight.”
Illa volans tenui per concita saxa luce fugit.

“To my God a heart of flame; To my fellow man a heart of love; To myself a heart of steel.”

“Silence lay like a white shroud over all. Kane wrenched his dirk clear and a trickle of seeping blood followed sluggishly, then ceased. The Puritan mechanically swished the blade through the air to shake off the red drops which clung to the steel, and as it flashed in the lanthorn light, it seemed to Jack Hollinster to glitter like a blue flame—a flame which had been quenched in scarlet.”

“(From the enclosed booklet) Jamaican Air -- Every flight is the red-eye!”

“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

“At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.”

“Love without fear and trepidation is fire without flame and heat, day without sun, comb without honey, summer without flowers, winter without frost, sky without moon, a book without letters.”