A few of my favorite passages from the series I've been reading

"Since the time of the Babylonian astronomers, solar eclipses had from time to time caused ominous shadows to fall upon the land. But England in winter sometimes afforded its long-suffering populace a contrary phenomenon, which was that after weeks of dim, colorless skies, suddenly the sun would scythe in under the clouds after it had seemed to set, and wash the landscape with pink, orange, and green illumination, clear and pure as gems. Empiricist though he was, Daniel felt free to ascribe meaning to this when it went his way. Ahead all was clear light, as if he were riding into stained glass. Behind (and he only bothered to look back once) the sky was a bruise-colored void, the land a long scrape of mud. The tavern rose up from the middle of the waste on a sheave of pilings that leaned into each other like a crowd of drunks. Its plank walls pawed a bit of light out of the sky, its one window glowed like a carbuncle. It was the sort of grotesque sky-scape that Dutchmen would come over to paint. But come to think of it, a Dutchman had come over and painted it."
-Quicksilver, page 860, by Neal Stephenson

"'My men think you are dead now, and won't waste balls on you,' Jack said. 'In fact I have let you live, but for one purpose only: so that you can make your way back to Paris and tell them the following: that the deed you are about to witness was done for a woman, whose name I will not say, for she knows who she is; and that it was done by 'Half-Cocked' Jack Shaftoe, L'Emmerdeur, the King of the Vagabonds, Ali Zayback: Quicksilver!'"
The Confusion, page 239, by Neal Stephenson

"Jack, who'd been so alert to Vrej, was blindsided by Eliza. She was on him, and hugged him side-on, and kissed him once on the cheek and leaned her head against his long enough to breathe into his ear: 'Sorry about the harpoon, and sorry about this; but I must do it, lest you end up in the Bastille, and I find poison in my coffee.'
Jack reached out to return the embrace but caught only air, for she'd darted back as quick as any defensing-master. 'I swear before God that you, Jack Shaftoe, shall never again look on my face, nor hear my voice, until the day you die.' Hastily then, before tears came, she turned to the King, who made a little gesture meaning that she was permitted to leave. She curtseyed, spun and got out of the room as if it were on fire."
The Confusion, pages 809-10, by Neal Stephenson