People, and boys the worst, are so much more intelligent than what comes out of their mouths.

Evil is abstract but existent. It's a negativity: untruth, dishonesty, abuse of trust. Evil, for us, isn't in-built - into people, into the cosmic scheme, but is a violation.

The glue between the horn that pushes and the sinew that pulls. The glue gets ignored, but you know, Ahai, up to half of a bow is glue. I suspect Ogodoi is the son I can least afford to lose.

The animals haven't split apart into what they think and what they feel. They are whole and trust in their instincts.

In the rare air of that altitude he forgot he was he. One way or another that was the aim of life. Shamans flew outside the self in ecstasy. Other people found love, or causes.

Tchingis, if you determine this is to be so, who can withstand you? You are poetry after an ugly day, and heal wounds I didn't know I had.

Such coincidences were the rhymes that God wrote into fate, his chords of music.

Perceptions? Yesugei didn't give a goat's toenail about perceptions, but society was society. ...'Who gives a billy's balls what one or two wives have to say?''Quite, father.' This was strong language, to cite the nether parts, stronger than toenails.

He only knows a single thing to clasp, that like God can't be split up into pieces: our honesty to one another.

Temujin had had not the slightest notion that bad emotion can just grow and grow from inside you and squeeze out the universe.

I am a neighbour king to stretch my branches over him, just as Toghrul sheltered me when I was a weed-stalk next to a strong tree.

Temujin watched Borte's ballet, her elegance on the fulcrum of her hips.

Besides, they cast an eye to the past, they didn't disgrace the ground they trod and they believed in the future again. That's what a victory does for you.

For a few heady weeks of the year the steppe in a binge throws out a wilderness of flowers that tangle your hooves and confuse your horse.

And I saw you and I thought, she'd be a cosy fit inside my arm.

Temujin nodded. He had every intention to do his bit in the battle, like his mother.