Petrik > Books: favorites‎ (206)

“What else is there to hope for with any art? To capture not just truth but a truth worthy of display, one that provides comfort, joy, or understanding, and moves the heart or makes it pause.”

“Hadrian had never witnessed Royce laughing in good humor. When he laughed, babies cried.”

“But everyone believes in something, you know? And what we choose to believe in says a lot—not only about the kind of people we are, but about the kind of people we want to be, and the kind of world we want to live in.”

“I just never noticed how little of me existed before. I was a shadow without a person.”

“Believing the worst of people, of the world in general, was a trap too easy to fall into. Hadrian had fought beside soldiers who'd developed similar views. Such men saw evil and virtue as concepts of naïveté. In their minds, there was no such thing as murder, a killing was just something you did when circumstances warranted.
A terrible way to live. What good is a world - what is the point of living - if generosity and kindness are myths?”

“We are more than the bodies we inhabit… They're little more than clothes, and yet we judge so much by them.”

“Many important events in history occurred in less-than-ideal fashion but were corrected in recollection.”

“Usually to make something truly great, you need to start from scratch, Royce remembered him saying. You need to break everything down, strip away the impurities, and it takes great heat to do that, but once you do, then the building can start. The result can seem miraculous, but the process—the process is always a bitch.”

“The right word, said at the right mo

“The right word, said at the right moment, can work magic, he was fond of saying. You merely need to understand power, where it comes from, and the direction it flows.”

‘“Because that’s what people do. They help each other. If you saw a man lying in the road with an arrow in him, you’d stop, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course… anyone would. A wounded man is easy pickings, unless you could see from your saddle that someone else has already taken his purse.”
“What? No! No one would rob a wounded man and leave him to die.”’

“Even if you’re doing it for selfish reasons, you’re still helping to save his life. It just goes to show that good can come from helping a stranger, and it proves that the world isn’t so bad after all.”

“In Royce’s eyes she could see the pain of struggling to survive reflected back. They were the same, two pieces of wood from different worlds but whose grain lined up, and it was then she knew she was falling in love.”

“One day you'll remember this moment. It will have faded to a mere wisp, a ghost of a long-forgotten past, but it will return to you.”

“If a bug bites you, you don’t bite it back… You crush the life out of the thing so it never bothers you again. And if you do that to an insect that can’t cause any serious harm, why would you do any less to an enemy who will almost certainly come back and kill if you don’t?

“The place was sacred to him—something he didn’t realize until that moment. The room was a sanctuary of kindness and comfort. He’d stayed there only a couple months, but coming back he wondered if what he was feeling could be what others felt about places they called home.”

“The thing about the old is that we never change so much as the young. We slip in degrees, adding rings like trees--a new wrinkle here, a shade less color there, but the young transform like caterpillars into butterflies. They become whole new people as if overnight.”

“Just as learning certain truths robs us of innocence, taking lives robs a man of his soul. Each killing steals a bit of humanity until a murderer is nothing more than an animal. A hunger replaces the spirit. A want for what was lost, but as with innocence, the soul can never be replaced. Joy, love, and peace flee such a vessel and in their stead blooms a desire for blood and death.”

“I feel very strongly that everyone should have an education. Ignorance is the bane of the world. Knowledge brings understanding, and if men understand the difference between right and wrong, they will, of course, do what is right.”

“There’s always hope… We’ve planted the seeds. All we can do now is wait and see what grows.”

“Of all the people on the ship, the courser knew most what it was to be alone. And Joron, as Meas had once said, had found command was the loneliest place of all.”

“And what is life for us if we are not lurching from one life-or-death situation to another?”

“And if this was not what his father had promised, if this was not the glorious stories of being fleet, of proud boneships and honourable shipwives, well, that was because life was not stories. Life was painful, and it was hard and it was cruel and full of loss. And if this was not the peace Meas had wanted, had fought for, that was because there was no peace without war.”

“Where there is misery someone’s always getting rich, and you can bet they’d be the last to throw scraps to the needy.”

“What is done in desperation can be terrible; what is done from cold calculation, well, that is evil. Or so I count it… Terrible acts, Joron, they are often unthinking. We learn, and we get better. It is those who do not learn, or simply embrace and become inured to the terrible things we do that must be feared, and must be stopped.”

“Better to die attempting something grand, than live in the world the Bern gave us.”

“So live, and do not spend your life looking back at what could have been.”

“Wanting it is a start… You also have to act. To try. Otherwise, it’s nothing more than an empty promise.”

“Oaths and vows should never be taken lightly. There is power in a promise that goes beyond the words. They bind our souls to a purpose, and failure can rend a person in two as surely as any blade.”

“We children of bandits make excuses for our parents when we’re young. We have to because we don’t know how else to exist. They’re our parents and they’re supposed to love us and we’re supposed to love them. So we make excuses. We reason away the things we know they do. We make excuses for them, even when they won’t make those excuses for themselves. Even when they don’t think they need to.”

“Yokai aren’t evil… Evil isn’t something a person is, it’s a choice a person makes. Yokai are creatures of instinct. It is their nature to seek vengeance. It is why they exist. They are not evil, but anyone who chooses to use them to commit atrocities is evil. Because that is the choice they have made.”

“We live in a world of people passing their pain to others. It shouldn’t be that way.”

“You said being good is about helping others. Even if they don’t think they need it. Being good is lending a hand when someone is in trouble. He can’t win. Not alone.”

“Not justice. I am not justice. I am a spirit of vengeance.”

“Our peoples’ stories. All of our peoples’. Ipian, Hosan, Nash, Cochtan. It might surprise you how many stories we share. And perhaps even more surprising that the lessons hiding in the stories are the same ones told time and time again.”

“Hah! Well, that’s life, isn’t it? You don’t ask for a lot of the stuff it throws at you, but you either look at it like a gift or a curse, and then figure out the rest from there.”

Unraveling: that’s what it feels like. The more I try to wind the lengths of my life into a neat, manageable knot, the more they seem to stretch and fray and snap. Order is not easy. Breaking takes less effort than building, that is the way of the world.

“Nothing can stop a man who thinks his violence is not only justified, but the epitome of virtue.”

“They’d wanted to protect each other so much, sometimes they’d forgotten what they were protecting.”

’“It’s not just about what I want,” she said with a sigh. “We take actions in life, and there are consequences. Those consequences narrow our choices. Time makes us walk a straight path between where we’ve been and where we are now. There’s no changing it.”
“But new decisions mean new consequences and new choices,” he said softly. “We’re never locked into one path. Time also allows us free will. She never freezes our future.”’

“People are more complex than that. Evil has its logics, just as good does. I need to understand Charbon to understand this killer.”

“Real time is far more valuable than bottled time. It has a better exchange rate. I decided I wanted to spend mine as productively as possible, get the biggest payout I could. That way, when I’m close to dying, I won’t feel the need to cash in—to lay on extra days, or months, or years. Because I won’t have any regrets. I think only people who waste their lives scrape for those extra minutes.”

“And thank you to everyone who picked up this book, especially the readers who are struggling—whether it be through external battles or internal ones. As krona pointed out, despair always lies, and no one should be expected to work through depression, anxiety, or a catastrophe alone.”

“The mind is a malleable thing. Soil, if you’re feeling poetic. Depending on the seed, anything will grow in it, from graceful gardens to idyllic meadows, from weedy forests to foggy swamps. Harmonious or chaotic, peaceful or perilous, healthy or ill—it’s all a matter of seeds.

“Our minds shape reality ... that is why superstitious peasants burn witches, jealous lovers murder their beloved, and lonely veterans put nooses around their necks.”

“Be realistic, Lysia, the only time a running system ever changes is in response to a crisis. As long as life is all right for the majority, nothing’s gonna happen… And when things do go south, people will always resort to violence. It’s just human nature.”

“If you fight injustice with injustice, no matter how deserved it may feel, you’ll always end up as just another turn of the wheel.”

“People were so quick to point at all those inspiring stories of catharsis, completely ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the broken never beat their demons, that the drunkard’s son stayed with the bottle, the war widow never conquered her loneliness, and the defiled child never wiped that imagined black stain from their soul. Because in a world that worshipped the victorious, who the hell wanted to hear about the defeated?”

“Life is an arena, and even if you’re the champion, one second of weakness is all it takes for the lions to pounce. Always remember that.”

“Change isn’t a flash but a long and rocky road.”

“Once the mind commits to a story, the facts become secondary. Truth bows to bias.”

“The world has never been fair. Often beautiful. Sometimes kind when kindness was not deserved. But never fair.”

“I find that unless we are very, very careful there can be a difference between who we are and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.”

“Thoughtfulness and kindness and love, I contend, are so much the way we expect the world to be that they become invisible as air. We only see war and violence and hatred as something happening, I suggest, because they stand out as aberrations. In my experience, even in the midst of war, many lives are untouched by battle. And even in a life of conflict, violence is outweighed by its absence.”

“The story of a person could never be as complex as they actually were because then it would take as much time to know someone as it did to be them. Reputation, even when deserved, inevitably meant simplification, and every simplification deformed.”

“I don't know what justice is," she said.
"That's because it isn't the sort of thing you discover. It's a thing you make." She looked at him, and he shrugged. "There are things you find out in the world. Rocks and streams and trees. And there are things you make. Like a house, or a song. It's not that houses and songs aren't real, but you don't just find them in a field someplace and haul them back home with you. They have to be worked at. Made.”

“There’s only one utter ending for each of us, and it isn’t one we reach toward. Until then, it’s the next change, and the next change, and the next. And profound change, even when it’s the one you prayed for, is displacing.”

“After you hear something so many times, it starts to define you, and it eventually becomes a prison. He had been confined by that prison all his life, and now he feared the world outside its walls.”

“He recognized that, while obsessing over things like knots and books might be a strength, it could also be another weakness. He could learn a lot by applying himself so obsessively—but he could lose a lot of friends doing that too. There was a delicate art to balance that he needed to find, and he vowed to strive for it.”

“Aram envied him, for he didn’t know how Kye could walk into a room and within minutes feel at home with the people there. It was a skill that had always eluded him, one of the great mysteries of social interaction that everyone else in the world seemed to know instinctively—everyone but him.”

“It’s true that there are some weaknesses that are outside our control. But even with those, we can usually find ways to adapt. As for weaknesses that we can control…well, life is about conquering our weaknesses and turning them into strengths. It’s how we grow as individuals. We can’t let our weaknesses limit our potential. We want to be defined by our strengths, not our shortcomings.”

“Every day on the way to Esmir’s, he could feel his heartbeat pick up in anticipation of what he might find within a leather binding. Books, he was finding out, could be just as much of an adventure as knots, and equally rewarding.”

“Fools always talk. Wise men listen.”

“If you’ve never fallen hard in love and lost your heart’s sovereign, go on and laugh at me. If you have, have a drink and dab an eye.”

‘“The sirs won’t help you any more than your Guild will, blacktongue. You know what they say about caught thieves, aye?”
“I’m not a thief.”
“Yes, and I’ll just put the tip in, we know how these things go.”’

“Monarchy is a bad system because, no matter how smart you are, you can still squirt a moron out of your plumbing. Maybe you get lucky and your son or daughter is at least half as smart as you—what about your grandchild? Probably a knob, and when they inherit the throne, everything you build fall to shyte.”

“I won’t bore you with the whole set of rules; just know Towers is like a war right there on the table, and it sucks money out of purses faster than a two-squinny harlot. Starts more fights than religion and politics together. And it’s addictive.”

“Ah, yeah, but wounds can be deeper than you realize. Even when the healing is done exactly right, sometimes time is still the best cure.”

'Lindon let out a breath of relief, but responded lightly. “Apologies. I’m afraid your hair is done for.” Eithan wilted against the tree. His eyes slowly closed. “Put me out of my misery. Make it quick.”'

“He could have set himself up like a king in some corner of the world. Could have scooped you three up, set fire to Heaven’s Glory, and left. But he stuck around for people who treated him like their least-favorite whipping boy. Don’t know who he was before, but that’s who he is now.”

“The legacy you inherit is nothing compared to the legacy you leave behind.”

“That’s what it sounded like. It sounded like the sunset looks. It sounded like all the world is there just to make you gasp with wonder, to open your heart so wide that it can absorb all that beauty and hold it and be it and never lose it, no matter what. That’s what the songs of the Drowned sound like.”

“I don’t ever want to be like that, she thought suddenly. I don’t want to have killed so many that it means nothing. I don’t want to be dead behind the eyes or in the heart.”

“You’ve broken the song and doomed us all, Great Octave. All that comes next, you have caused. All of it.”

“My song will drive them to ruin. Those who live will do so in the agony of their wrongdoing. I am the song and it is bloody. I am the song and it is war.”

“I guess you could call it a "failure", but I prefer the term "learning experience".”

“I don’t want to come off as arrogant here, but I’m the best botanist on the planet.”

“He’s stuck out there. He thinks he’s totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?” He turned back to Venkat. “I wonder what he’s thinking right now.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 61
How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense.”

“Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.”

“If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do.”

“The costliest mistake one can make is to underestemite one’s opponent through low expectations.”

“Life is a series of false hopes. We all have misplaced hopes until we learn better. I did.”

“A man with a destiny is a man who fears nothing.”

“Many of you, including my own Knife, object to this appointment, but you must trust that in my old age, perhaps I read a future in the heavens that you cannot. You may think her a puzzling choice, and you would be right. But often greatness comes from unexpected places.”

“Violence should only be used in defense, and even then, it corrupts. If you must kill your enemy, do it quickly and be done. To linger only invites humiliation of both the victim and the self, and there is no honor there.”

“If your stories are of the glory of war, then I will know you value power. If your stories are of kinship, then I know you value relationship. If your stories are of many children, I know you value legacy. But if your stories are of adaptation and survival, of long memory and revenge, then I will know you are a Crow like me.”

“That was the thing about omens—they were made up. Imagined signals of something nebulous. So why not make them up to be something positive?”

“Everyone else pranced around without ever having to worry they were a burden to others. Never remaining in the same place—when they longed to move around—because they didn’t want it to be a bother. They didn’t know what they had. But Rysn knew exactly what she’d lost.”

“But it’s nice to make people laugh at you for something you do, and not something you can’t control. You know?”

“You could always defeat gloomy Passions with optimism and determination. Even the worst highstorm dropped fresh water.”

“Sometimes you need to accept what you’ve lost, then move forward. Then you can instead realize what you’ve gained.”