Marya

“He could guess, analyze, play out scenarios in his mind, but he would never know. It was a night-time truth that became a queer, private sorrow for him amid all that came after. A symbol, a displacement of regret. A reminder of what it was to be mortal and so doomed to tread one road only and that one only once, until Morian called the soul away and Eanna’s lights were lost. We can never truly know the path we have not walked.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“Some paths, some doorways, some people were not to be yours, though the slightest difference in the rippling of time might have made it so.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay

“Language. The process of sharing with words seemed such a futile exercise sometimes.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“I didn't ask to be made a princess."

This time all three of them laugh, although it is gentle enough.

"Who chooses their fate?" It is the third one, the tallest. "Who asks to be born into the times that are theirs?"

"Well, who accepts the world only as it comes to them?" she says, too quickly.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven