Geraldine Brooks, The Secret Chord

"I knew that the Name was still with him, animating his soul, even as his body failed."

"Even those who know better, such as the King, nurse strange ideas about me as a prophet. They do not understand that I am given to see only those matters that roil the heavens. They expect me to know everything."

"Being a father, having an heir, seem to add an extra dimension to David. He had always been of vivid, animating presence in any room he entered. But now he would come from visiting the boy crackling with even greater energy and force. He had been engaged listener, ready to learn what any man might have to offer in discussion, but now there was an additional depth to his questions, a more far-reaching vision behind his decisions. He thought now beyond the span of years, and into a future that glistened ahead into centuries. It's one thing, I suppose, to have a prophet tell you that you will found a dynasty. Now, it seemed, he allowed himself to truly believe it."

"In the heir's world, where everything was available, the unattainable had a wild allure."

"He said that the music—its order and precision—helped him find the patterns in things—the way through the confusion of events and opinions to direction, to order, and beyond, to inspiration."

"David set me to learn other skills, too, in those days of restless waiting."

"I ceased to serve a king and began, instead, to serve a kingdom."

"You don't need a prophet to tell you to eat."

"It is one thing to know what is to come. It is another thing to confront it."

"He gave himself fully to the penitent life, fasting, praying, confessing his wickedness and execrating himself in public. He became a better man in the small matters of his days, an even better, wiser king in the great matters of state."

"the heart of a prophet is not his own to bestow."

"He did wrong. He has acknowledged it before the people. He repents it. How many kings have the humility to do that?"

"It's remarkable how very many things there are that a king may not do."

"I liked to be off by myself, away from the eyes of adults who always had some task or errand to demand of an unoccupied child."

"David would wear no purple cloth, no symbols of his kingship, when he went to greet the ark. In its presence, we were all of us servants."

"He found his voice in the silences, where he could sing as loud and as long as he wanted with no one to complain of it."

"When the madness came, he would be like a man staggering along the rim of the abyss – which was his rage – and when the edge gave way or he missed his step, he might clutch at anyone within reach and drag that person with him over the precipice."

"We look at the Ark of the Covenant and remember who we are."

"The wiles of a veteran turned the younger man's own gift of speed against him."

"Where was his empathy? Buried, I supposed, beneath his self-regard."