Gary Jennings (author)

"No man ever took better care of his life. He lived only to go on living." I waited for more, but he said no more, so I asked, "What became of him, Master Cuachic?" "He died." "That is all?" "What else ever becomes of any man? I no longer remember even his name. No one remembers anything at all about him, except that he lived and then he died."

"Your Astute Majesty can hardly have failed to notice that the earlier pages have treated—casually, without remorse or repentance—of such sins as homicide, prolicide, suicide, anthropophagy, incest, harlotry, torture, idolatry, and breach of the Commandment to honor father and mother. If, as it has been said, ones sins are wounds of ones soul, this Indians soul is bleeding at every pore."

"The gods supposedly know all our plans, and know their ends before their beginnings. The Gods are mischievous, and they delight to potter with the plans of men. They usually prefer to complicate those plans, as they might snarl a fowlers net, or to frustrate them so the plans come to no result whatever. Very seldom do the gods intervene to any worthier purpose. But I do believe, that time, they looked at my plan and said among themselves, "This dark scheme contrived by Dark Cloud, it is so ironically good, let us make it ironically even better."

"To command respect and deference and privileges reserved for the nobility, I need only dare to be a noble."

"Your Most Lofty Majestys royal cédula specifies that we, in providing the chronicle, shall inform ourself "from ancient Indians." This has necessitated something of a search, inasmuch as the total destruction of this city by Captain-General Hernán Cortés left us very few ancient Indians from whom to seek a credible oral history. Even the workers currently rebuilding the city consist mainly of women, children, the dolts and dotards who were unfit to fight in the sige, brute peasants conscripted form the outlying lands. Oafs, all of them."

"Think, imagine, picture yourself, Your Excellency, as that tree of great shade. See in your mind its immensity, its mighty boughs and the birds among them, the lush foliage, the sunlight upon it, the coolness it casts upon a house, a family, the girl and boy who were my sister and myself. Could Your Excellency compress that tree of great shade back into the acorn which Your Excellencys father once thrust between your mothers legs? Yya ayya, I have displeased Your Excellency and dismayed your scribes. Forgive me, Your Excellency. I should have guessed that the white mens private copulation with their white women must be different—of more delicacy—than I have seen them perform forcibly upon our women in public. And assuredly the Christian copulation that produced Your Excellency must have been even moreYes, yes, Your Excellency, I desist."