While nobles are crying in their nights' chains, the squires sing. The terrible politics of the Grail can never touch them. Song is the magic cape.

Obadiah Bind - their - kings - in - chains - and -their - nobles - with - links - of - iron.

Prayer is omnipotent: its breath can melt adamantine rocks - its touch can break the stoutest chains.

Iceland has already released the first pictures of an aeroplane that has shed everything calling it the holy grail.

Paranoia's the garlic in life's kitchen, right: you can never have too much.

What of Thought? The Crew had developed a kind of shorthand whereby they could set forth any visions that might come their way. Conversations at the Spoon had become little more than proper nouns, literary allusions, critical or philosophical terms linked in certain ways. Depending on how you arranged the building blocks at your disposal, you were smart or stupid. Depending on how others reacted they were In or Out. The number of blocks, however, was finite.
"Mathematically, boy," he told himself, "if nobody else original comes along, they're bound to run out of arrangements someday. What then?" What indeed. This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.
It scared Eigenvalue, sometimes. He would go in back and look at the set of dentures. Teeth and metals endure.