“He said, 'You have everything there is of me, save a little I gave to my people. Now you hold that as well.'
And last of all, when he had released her and moved to the door, to stand outside where the sky was enclosed with thick hills and dark, heavy forests, he said, because he could not prevent himself, 'When next you stand by the sea, say goodbye for me.”
“You have only to lift your hand,' Thorkel Fostri said. And after a moment, 'What else were you born for?'
'Why not happiness, like other men?" Thorfinn said.
'You have that,' said his foster-father. 'But if you try to trap it, it will change. Why do you resist? It is your right.'
'I resist because it is no use resisting,' Thorfinn said. 'Do you not think that is unfair? I shall be King because I was King; and I shall die because I did die; and did I remember them, I could even tell what are the three ways it might befall me.”
“A man of over thirty might be held to be at the height of his powers, but not necessarily of his wisdom.”
“Don't you know, even yet, why I came back to Orkney?" Rognvald said.
Than Thorfinn looked up. Rognvald's gaze, waiting for his, took and sustained it. Thorfinn did not look away, but his face held no expression.
Rognvald said "I am the dog at your heel. Everything I have ever done has been an attempt to be like Thorfinn.”
“Then she said, "Thorfinn!" quickly, and moved to him; but had hardly got to his side before he loosed his fingers and thumbs and plunged them down to the mattress like spear-points.
"No!Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth!" the name reached her like sling-shot.
Groa said, "They are the same man. I should know. I married both.”
“His chest heaved, and he coughed.
"You have coughed before," his mother said. "It is a sign of weakness. Control it.”
“The abyss in which I live hasn't the wit to save itself from savage ignorance, and I now feel assured that I am not in the company of my own species (at least, I hope I am not, for it I am, then I am they). Dear God, let time pass quickly, and let this end. Let me be older and let this mediocrity pass as a dream - one in which the utmost was done to bury me alive.”
“It‘s complicated. I think when bad things happen—whether someone dies or people argue or split up—you get to a point where it‘s just too hard to go back. There‘s so much lost. So many versions of the truth. So many versions of how things might‘ve turned out differently. We all long for what could have been. For some people, it‘s just easier to move forward and try to forget.”
“What did I tell you about that giggle? If you start now, you’ll go all evening and get all my patients started and it’ll take me forever to calm them down.”
“Kinda wished I had met you sooner,” he said quietly.”
“I feel as though my life were a film I've seen too many times; it bores me because I know it by heart, and yet I don't understand it.”
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