“Will there be poppy juice in it?"
Phresine shook her head.
"Good. My wife and I agreed that only my wine was to be poisoned.”

“I made the wrong choice," I whispered.
My mother shook her head.
"A child should never have to choose.”

“Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief.”

“Red, red wine
Go to my head.
Make me forget that I
Still need her so.Red, red wine,
It's up to you.
All I can do, I've done.
But memories won't go.
No, memories won't go.”

“Everything rests on the poisoned wine. If it were just the queen, I could force it down her gullet, but Declan Broekhart would run me through with that damned ceremonial sword, and if his wife's stares were daggers, he'd be dead already.”

“There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”

“"You really want to know what else it was my mom said about you?" he asked.
She shook her head.
He didn't seem to notice. "She said you'd break my heart."”

“And I just like the guy. He's a good joe. Obviously loves his wife, calls her his better half, and polls show America agrees.”

“She turned to the sunlight
    And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
    "Winter is dead.”

“When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat,
The people scattered gold-dust before my horses feet;
But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back.”