Peace is but the absence of war.
Chains are forged of many strange metals.
Voortya was the goddess of warfare, General. And you of all people should know that war is an art requiring decorum and formality.
The best soldier doesn’t value life, not even their own.
“She’s come to murder whatever’s left of our culture!” cries Balakilya.
“She’s here to force us to bow to the whip of Saypur!” shouts another man.
“Oh, for the love of…” Mulaghesh walks to the railing. “You want to know why I’m here? Here of all places on this damned world?”
“Tell us!” shouts one of the men below. “Tell us!”
“Fine!” snarls Mulaghesh. “I’m on vacation, you dumb sons of bitches!”
If wisdom comes with age, why do I keep making so many bad decisions, Pitry?
a slave will use any tool to escape their slavery, even those of their masters.
What wild promises we make in order to justify the worst of decisions.
Isn’t that, uh, a l-little bit p-paranoid, G-General?’
‘Maybe. But paranoia usually doesn’t harm, and often helps.
Some places deserve to be forgotten.
The older you get, the more voices you get in the back of your head.
After all, deep in every Texan’s heart, there remains the steadfast belief that any problem can be solved with a big enough gun.
...there is no better time to examine and understand one’s selfhood than when it is dissected and hurtling through darkness.
No one does. No one really knows how to be happy. You just get close, sometimes. That’s all I want – just to be close.
So if you’re losing the debate, you change the conversation.
"Мы обращаемся к нашему прошлому, чтобы узнать, как пришли к настоящему."
Шрамы – окна в боль, и лучше их не трогать.
Божества создали ад, и не один, – говорит он, – но все они бледнеют перед тем, что создали для себя люди.
Forgetting... is a beautiful thing. When you forget, you remake yourself... For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must forget it was a caterpillar at all. Then it will be as if the caterpillar never was & there was only ever a butterfly.
..history, as you may know, is much like a spiral staircase that gives the illusion of going up, but never quite goes anywhere.
The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope.
You can be a girl at any age, you know. Girls at forty. Girls at fifty. There's a kind of flightiness to them, just like how a man at forty can have the impatience and belligerence of a five-year-old boy. But you can also be a woman at any age.
There is no crueler hells then committee work....
Shara was already an avid reader by then, but she had never realized until that moment what books meant, the possibility they presented: you could protect them forever, store them up like engineers store water, endless resources of time and knowledge snared in ink, tied down to paper, layered on shelves.... Moments made physical, untouchable, perfect, like preserving a dead hornet in crystal, one drop of venom forever hanging from its stinger.
She felt overwhelmed. It was--she briefly thinks of herself and Vo, reading together in the library--a lot like being in love for the first time.
When in doubt, be patient, and watch.