Petrik > Books: favorites‎ (206)

“Though each individual mortal experiences life for but a score of years, they can draw upon a store of stories left by all their forbearers. The race of humankind grows toward infinity, even as the nature of each individual is limited. Nature may describe tendencies and circumscribe potentialities, but it is within the power of each soul to nurture itself for another life, to imagine a course not taken, to strive for a different view. Through that yearning by the finite for the infinite, the portraits painted by all the mortal eyes may yet piece together a grander truth than our divine understanding.”

“Everyone is a storyteller… That’s how we make sense of this life we live. Misfortune and affliction test us with one blow after another, most of which we don’t deserve. We have to tell ourselves a story about why to make all the random manipulations of fate and fortune bearable.”

“In Dara there is a sacred bond between a teacher and a student. Though I am your slave, I am also your teacher. It’s my duty to protect you from the consequences of bad choices, and that duty is not dissolved just because you didn’t like my lessons.”

“As the Ano sages would say… ‘Sometimes a paving stone is essential on the path to mine pure jade.’ Even an impractical idea may spark a better plan down the road.”

“The emperor’s school affiliation or academic accomplishments are not the point. The point is, as a child, the emperor was once inspired by the words of Kon Fiji to defend his friend Rin Coda from arrows raining out of the sky, an incident well-known by every teahouse storyteller. From this, we can infer that scholarship is directly correlated with courage. The more books read, the greater the warrior.”

“Adherence to the teachings of the sages or the gods both require faith. But in every age and among all peoples, the ones who live by faith alone and the ones who reject faith completely are few, while those who stand on the border between belief and disbelief, leaning toward what is convenient at the moment, make up the majority.”

“In our histories, we call those who kill thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions, great, but they are often little more than hollow shells, walking corpses into which we project our fantasies of what heroism and nobility look like. I know what an obsession with vengeance and heroism did to my nephew; I do not believe that is what your mother would want for you.”

“The best scholars spend so much time studying the Classics that they forget to eat not because they wish to exercise power as high officials, but because they love the smell of writing knife carving into hot wax and the mind-pleasure of debating the wisdom of the sages with a friend. The tinkerers and wanderers who invent and create do so not to pursue profit, but because they love the freedom they experience when they make a thing: something imperfect, silly, perhaps even useless, but theirs and wholly new.”

“She had lived so long as a reader that she had forgotten that a culture could not be reduced to writing, that wisdom could not be imprisoned in books, that to live was to breathe, to dance, to hunt, to forget.”

“It was a painting richer in color than the work of jaded portraitists in money-blinded Dimushi, a symphony more pleasing than the vulgar din generated by the orchestras of traveling folk opera troupes, a tapestry of sensations and textures against the tongue more varied than the smooth silks and rough hempen clothes and nubbly woolen yarns found in Boama, a potpourri of aromas more intoxicating than the famed medicine shops of Çaruza, and a parade of tastes each more astounding than the last, a feast for the senses fit for the gods.”

“Remember that cooking and eating are about more than sustenance. Food is a language of its own. Chewing up tough meat and vegetables to feed us one mouthful at a time was how parents spoke to us before we had grown teeth or learned our first words; making their favorite dishes and leaving them on the ancestral altar is how we tell our parents that we love them when they can no longer hear us. We honor our past and hope for the future when we cook and eat.”

“Mind-pleasure comes from love, Kinri, love of sister, parent, friend, country, literature, beauty itself. A great lady I met at Lake Tututika on that outing taught me that. Love allows us to taste the fish, not just to weigh it. “And so, the best way to evoke mind-pleasure is to tell a story about love. That’s what all great art, fine cooking included, is about.”

“Weighing the fish requires only a fair scale, but there is no fairness when it comes to taste. The senses are governed by mind-pleasure. If you love a man, you think him handsome; if you hear a song from your childhood, you think it pleasant; if a smell or taste reminds you of home, then you feel its tickling caress in your heart.”

“Some of the most important decisions we make in life are not derived from reason, from weighing the fish, from an evaluation of the pros and cons—but from a simple leap of faith, of love that needs no evidence, apology, or argument.”

"Hope was the currency that ne

"Hope was the currency that never ran out, and it was the fate of the poor to toil and endure, wasn't it?"

"The dreams of the great lords of the world were built upon the blood and bones of the common people. The blossoming of the golden chrysanthemum required the fertilizer made from the ashes of the Hundred Flowers. That was an eternal truth."

"A god of war is also the god of those who are caught in the wheel of eternal struggle, who fight on despite knowledge of certain defeat, who stand with their companions against spear and catapult and gleaming metal, armed with only their pride, who strive and assay and press and toil, all the while knowing that they cannot win.
"You are not only the god of the strong, but also the god of the weak. Courage is better displayed when it seems all is lost, when despair appears the only rational course.”

"You see, you enjoyed my lectures on the Incentivists and the Patternists because I dressed them up as lessons on how to fly a balloon. A good idea is more easily absorbed if it is given the right expression, and that is why even when you have the right answers, you'll convince more people when you present them with good handwriting and proper sentence construction."

“The art of war requires withholding information from the enemy as long as possible, and not every victory is worth the pursuit.”

"What courage it took for the starving and the poor to continue the mere act of existence, of survival, of endurance. Such quiet acts of heroism were not celebrated, and yet they made up the foundation of civilization, far more than all the honorable sentiments of the Ano sages and the pretty words of the nobles."

“It is only when one is away from home that one can see its beauty.”

“I was taught that what we fill our hearts with has much more to do with our fates than our native talents or circumstances. I was named Dissolver of Sorrows, and I intend to live up to my name. If our situation seems hopeless, we can either give in to it and lament our fortune, or revise the script and chart ourselves a new course. We’re always the heroes of our own stories.”

“There are no born heroes, and legends are just stories. Gin, you know the truth as well as I. But the world sometimes demands a man or a woman to step forward to embody the will of the many, and thus are legends and heroes born. True courage comes not from being certain and unafraid, but from doing what must be done even while being terrified and full of doubts.”

“Though all life is an experiment, there are moments of purity of purpose that demand no justification. Today, Dara is under threat of a dark storm that has no comparison. There is no long view that can justify enslavement and capitulation. When the only alternative is death and servitude, I believe all of us know what must be the right choice.”

“Every cupa stone can be sacrificed, as long as the game is won.”

"When you've lived for as long as I have, you realize that the greatest pleasures in life are not very impressive at all. It's better to have one true friend who can understand the voice in your heart when you pluck out a hesitant tune on the zither than to have the unthinking adoration of millions."

“Read a lot of books and try a lot of recipes…When you learn enough about the world, even a blade of grass can be a weapon.”

“A knife is not malicious merely because it is sharp, and a plot is not evil merely because it is effective. All depends on the wielder. The grace of kings is not the same as the morals governing individuals.”

“There’s never going to be an end to suffering if ‘he deserves it’ is all the justification people need for inflicting pain.”

“A lord who knows how to wield men is ten times more fearsome than one who knows only how to wield a sword.”

“A man who can kill several people with a sword is merely a living weapon. A great warrior can kill thousands of men with just his mind.”

“By custom, we wield the sword and wear the armor, but who among you does not know a mother, sister, daughter, friend, who exceeds you in courage and fortitude?
So let us no more think of being compared to women as an insult.”

“Our lives are too brief to worry about the judgment of others, let alone that of history.”

“To know the future is to have no choice… to be words fixed on a page by someone else. We can only do what we think is best, trusting that it will all somehow work out.”

“This is a story very much concerned about all the ways in which every system, however idealistic it may be, tends to have winners and losers and oppressors and the oppressed. The cycle of trying to reach more justice is one that can never end. There is no golden age because we’re always trying to perfect ourselves and yearning towards a future that’s better.”

"I have to confess that

"I have to confess that of all the books I have written, these three are my favourites.” – Bernard Cornwell