Petrik > Books: favorites‎ (205)

"It takes more than

"It takes more than one person to birth a conspiracy."

"A civilisation is lost, not when the messages of our heroes are forgotten, but when they are corrupted. When we are led by those with the loudest voices, rather than those with the keenest minds. When learning is ridiculed and ignorance lauded."

"When faith becomes religion, and worship is enforced with threat and fear, morality actual suffers in the shadow of morality implied."

"Do the people serve the king, or does the king serve the people? Consider the circle. Strong and flexible, but a single break in the line and the structure falls apart. Therefore it might be better to say: The people DO serve the king, so that the king MAY serve the people."

“So many faces here I recognize… And just as many I don’t. I’m sorry about that. I wish I’d spent more time getting to know you all. But ours is a broad family. A tree with roots as deep as the world, and more branches than rivers feeding the World Vein. The Hostain blood runs strong in us all. The blood of the Saint, who forged humanity into an empire. The blood of rulers, who have held us all together and brought us prosperity and wisdom and strength.”

"History is mutable, written not by the hand of relevance, but instead by those with ink to spare."

“If we are truly just cogs, and part of some great machine, then it must run poorly indeed.”

“Any utopia founded on the assumption that people will suddenly stop being selfish, irrational monkeys is a fool’s dream.”

“This is a story about the end of the world; this is a story about monsters. From such small origins come such calamity; from such humble beginnings are born such dire endings. May the Mother have mercy on them for their innocence. And for what they did, for what they caused to happen, may the Twins rake the flesh from their bones until the end of all time.”

“A child should possess three qualities in abundance: Wonder, Curiosity, and Mischief. The child should pursue these qualities constantly, and for as long as they are able, for this is the purpose and sole responsibility of Childhood. When the child becomes an adult, of course, these qualities become the most dangerous sort of liability.”

“Like all stories about the end of the world, it is hard to know where to start, and doubly so with stories about The Monsters. Do we start when Gun met Jackie? Or, perhaps, when they got the sword, the piece of dumb steel that would play such an oversized part in such great events? Do we instead travel back to when Gun first had the dream, the dream of darkness and a Giant, and of a shining, silvery sword? Do we, perhaps, attempt to relate the unremarkable story of Gun’s childhood, in an effort to tease out reasons behind what he did? Must we peer at the young face of Jackie Aimes to see if we can find the seed of the creature she would become?”

“Trust, unlike love, is a deliberate exercise of will. You can’t help who you love. But you sure as hell can choose who you trust. Even if, as is sometimes the case, you happen to love them.”

“First, I may be good or I may be bad, but I’m a lot more likely to be both. Like, for instance, every single other creature that ever lived. Thinking you know what someone will do just because you think they’re ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is a quick way to lose at the game you’re playing. Good people do appalling things for good reasons, and bad people do good things for selfish reasons and every combination between.

“His brother loved learning things, loved it more than anything else in the world, and this made him James’ natural enemy. Chris—and James could still hardly believe it was true—read books for fun.”

“Names are important things, defining things; magical things. The man who currently calls himself West has had many names. They are like lenses through which he projects himself. There is power in names, power over hearts, channels for the mind. “

“Point being, you little stubborn sum-bitch, that you can take some dirt and you can make the most incredible things in the world, but it takes work. It takes sacrifice. It takes time, and it takes commitment. It takes wisdom.”

“Only a fool steps over an unexpected weight of silver because they are hoping to find gold.”

“There’s no more time for secrets, or false names, or subterfuge. It’s time that we know each other’s stories; the long and painful and uncomfortable stories of how we ended up in the Keep, here at the end— and beginning—of everything.”

“An artist craves an audience, but maybe not all audiences are crave-worthy. “

“Everyone is heroic, the protagonist of their story, the only story they’ll know from the inside out—true, unflinching, joyous in the face of the void. There is light in everything. It is all so beautiful.

“It’s the fashion among some “aspiring artists” at the co-op to formulate their critiques in the harshest terms possible in the belief that they are doing the victim a favor because a “thick skin” is necessary for artists. She’s never really understood their logic, however, since a thin skin, a vulnerability, a sensitivity toward the nuances of reality—a readiness to perceive dragons—is necessary to see the world’s beauty, to feel the tingling in the fabric of the cosmos that is at the foundation of all art.”

“We’re all trying to tell our own story… And we make other people parts of our own stories. We’re meant to bring our stories together, to speak and listen and know that the stories are real and they matter. I’m glad you are a part of my story, and I’m sorry I didn’t listen to your story as well as I should have. Thank you.”

“Life is one long story we tell ourselves to make sense of the world, and in our quest for meaning, we make other people players in our own psychomachia. Sometimes the consequence of doing that can be terrible, like what happened to me. But it’s worth remembering that everyone is trying their best to look for their dragon, to find the heart of their story, and to then tell it as well as they are able.”

“It’s okay to take art that’s out there and make it part of your own story, to read into it what you want, desire, need—it’s inevitable, really. Maybe that is the only kind of universality possible.

But we should also try to remember that each artist has their own story. An artist doesn’t just crave an audience, but an audience who can hear that story, who can affirm that the story matters.
Everyone deserves that.”

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

“Because,' she said, 'when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave.”

“I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?”

“Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.”

“The names are the first things to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than our names.”

“Shean enjoyed thinking. Logic was a comfort— as long as she had a plan, she had direction, a guide to follow and mull over and think and rethink until she’d thought of every possible outcome to every possible event.”

“I wanted to be a dollmaker because a dollmaker saved me. I wanted to be like my hero. I wanted to save people, just like I was saved…

“And if there is one thing I’ve learned from dollmaking, it’s that you can’t control the impact your dolls will have on the world around them— when I was young, my own master encouraged me to yearn for neither a guard license nor that of an artisan. Of course I had childish hopes and dreams, wishes. But I did my best to heed her advice, and by the time I was given my license I was neither particularly relieved nor disappointed by the result.”

“Master Coen told me once that the most dangerous part of the Shod’s existence is how they occupy people’s minds, driving out good thoughts with bad, frightened ones. Toy dolls distract from the darkness; they fill peoples’ lives with beauty and companionship.”

“There comes a time when all other voices must be blocked from your mind, a time when you must turn inward and ask yourself who you are, what you want, and how you can best achieve those goals. No one can do that for you. I should’ve told you that years ago.”

"I was raised to believe I could do anything I set my mind to, even if that 'doing' included perceived failures and the discovery that I do not, in fact, possess every talent known to mankind. 'Doing' doesn’t always mean succeeding. But the only true failure is never trying in the first place."—Lynn Buchanan

“Oh, you’ve always got to smile a little, Din… Even during, you know, the abysmally fucking awful times.”

“Oh, people love the Legion, with their swords and their walls and their bombards. But though they receive no worship, it’s the maintenance folk who keep the Empire going. Someone, after all, must do the undignified labor to keep the grand works of our era from tumbling down.”

“It’s not all walls and death and plotting! Nor is it dreary dispensations and bureaucracy! We do these ugly, dull things for a reason— to make a space where folk can live, celebrate, and know joy and love.

“I have never liked the company of too many people, Din. I have always preferred patterns and the consumption of information to socializing. I have preferred and will always prefer staying in my residence and will avoid stimulation at all costs. This is simply who I am.”

“It’s the maintenance folk who keep the Empire going. Someone, after all, must do the undignified labor to keep the grand works of our era from tumbling down. I simply perform maintenance, in my own little way. And you have ably assisted me in that, of course.”

“Life is very long. I had not known my brother in centuries. It may seem strange to you, dear Reader, who has not perhaps the luxury of so long a life, that my brother should retain so great a hold on me after so long—and yet it is so. But the impact of childhood, I have found, does not diminish. Not after a hundred years, not after five.”

“Stranger still that on both occasions, you should be at the heart of things… Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footsteps of doom?” She said this last in Classical English, and I recognized the phrase.
“Tolkien,” I said.’

“One is always exposed in the void, even on the vastest starship, without the comforting blanket of the sky to keep one warm. But in that moment, I imagined—and perhaps I sensed—a will, a malice, as though some terrible eye was questing in the Dark, scouring the stars. Jadd had been a paradise, a garden behind whose walls I had long been kept safe. I had returned to infinite space, the ceaseless night of the wider universe. To my old world and life.”

“We cannot decide the world we live in ourselves, but we can change the world for those who follow after.”

“I was nothing at all. The barest drop in a limitless ocean. One photon against the infinite Dark. One is enough. The voice that whispered to me then was not my own, nor was it Ushara’s… It was no voice at all, hardly to be heard. But it was right. Had I not seen—had I not been shown—had I so easily forgotten how fragile the darkness is? One photon was enough to hold it back.”

“The one must work for the good of the many, so the Mux Sae says, but the Lothrians would destroy every one for their many—not realizing the contradiction.”

“It is not power that builds empires, that asserts order on the stars. It is vision. Vision and the heroic will to act. Where there is that vision, all else follows. Where it is not, there is decadence, desperation, and decay. I understood all this then, in that moment, though it has taken me much time to order my thoughts on the matter, and perhaps it is only now—by the light of my murdered sun and the dark days that have followed it—that I see things clearly.”

“I say it is the cruel law of art that all things must die, and that we ourselves must die . . . having exhausted every suffering, so that the grass, not of oblivion but of eternal life, should grow, fertilized by works.”

“You believe you fight to reduce the evil in what is… You fight to increase the good. Every person you save, every world left untrammeled by evil serves to increase the good in that final accounting. You asked why he does not end all that he has made: because the story is not yet finished, even now, and he will not end it until every bead of light has had its day.

“It’s war, Hadrian… Each of us pretends to be fighting for right, or Earth or gods . . . but in truth, we’re each only fighting for ourselves. The Cielcin are no different. They need to eat. All that matters, ultimately, is that we win. How we won will be decided later, that it may be said we fought with honor.”

“People conceive of war and battle as mere events, happening for discrete periods of time in a specific place. But war is a place unto itself. A new universe, one with its own laws of time and space. Seconds which might have passed one after another in ordinary time pass all at once in war—so that hours vanish in instants—or not at all. In war, often a single second contains lifetimes.”

“Pain. Our fear of pain is the foundation of all morality. It is that fear that shapes our world, orders civilization... Our experiences of pain teach us the nature of suffering, and so we are moved to minimize that suffering in others. Pain grounds our reality, is the cornerstone of our interactions with the objective world. Pain makes us human, teaches us to be human.

“You can’t escape the past, Lukan. It’s our lifelong companion, always at our side.”

“You have to stand up for yourself, you understand? You can’t let someone have their way just because they were born into wealth and privilege. That doesn’t make them better than you.”

“I remember the joy when the fighting finally stopped– it was thick as honey, you could almost taste it in the air. The whole city was dizzy with the thought of peace after decades of war, with the belief that our enemies across the sea could become our friends. But the world turns and younger generations forget the lessons learned by the old . . . and the wolves of greed and prejudice come slinking back from the shadows.’

“You might think you fight a duel with your blade, Shafia had told Lukan, the first time she’d placed a wooden practice sword in his hand. But you’d be wrong. You fight a duel with your mind, before the swords have even been drawn. A show of confidence–whether a smile, a stare, or a strut,– can sow doubt in your opponent, even fear. And that can be just as deadly as a perfect thrust or a well-timed riposte.”

“In that moment Flea had realised that trust freely given was more valuable than any trinket she’d ever stolen. It was an almost physical presence inside her chest, lending her a degree of confidence and pride that she’d never felt before.”

“Death is the great equaliser, the philosopher Volendt declared in his treatise An Unseen Philosophy, a text that Lukan had been forced to read during his first year at the Academy. A dark mistress who holds no regard for wealth, nor power, nor birthright. All souls are equal before her gaze.”

‘ . . . did it have a hundred legs?’
‘I don’t know, kid. I was too busy screaming to count.’
‘Because it hurt?’
‘No, because I was enjoying it tickling my balls.’

“One of the first things he’d learned about gambling was that a little bravado went a long way. If you could plant a seed of doubt in your opponents’ minds, and nurture it with the appropriate words and gestures, you could force them into making mistakes.”

‘A few books went missing from the library… Several rare first editions, or some such. Apparently they’re quite valuable, though why anyone would waste good coin on some dusty old books is beyond me.’

“No one chooses to be a thief, it’s something that’s thrust upon us. We just have to make the best of it.’

“This one’s for the fans.”—Fonda Lee

“These books are how I discovered I’m a character writer. Seeing readers fall in love with these fictional people, as I have, has been one of my greatest professional satisfaction.”—Fonda Lee

“A family can’t survive when divided by secrets. I learned that the hard way.”

“Hilo, as unruly as he was at school, was too martially talented, too obviously destined to become a high-ranking Fist at the very least. No amount of suffered exasperation could blind the Pillar to the fact that his younger grandson, properly trained, would become a fearsome asset to the clan.”

“We’ve been friends since we were kids in the Academy. Why wouldn’t I also want your sister to have a good life? So what if she’s a stone-eye? Not all men are so superstitious they can’t see other good qualities in a person… A man can’t ignore his feelings about something important, no matter what.”

“No matter how much jade Kaul Sen awarded to his granddaughter, no matter how many parties he threw for her or how much he bragged about his “best grandson” to his friends, he could not, even as the Pillar of the clan, give her true greenness, the simple respect accorded by and to men, friends and enemies alike, honestly earned.”

“A beautiful thing about stories is that they exist forever suspended in time. Opening a book transports you instantly to the time and place on the page. It’s easy to turn back the clock on the years, to flip to page one and begin the journey all over again. It turns out I wasn’t quite done with the Kaul family after all. But perhaps, they are done with me. After everything tragic and triumphant they’ve been through, they deserve their rest.”—Fonda Lee

“Children often do not understand the importance of what their parents try to teach them.”

“It is good to sit down from time to time and appreciate the simpler things in life.”

“It was just like that old saying: trust your neighbor, but lock the door. Even if you trusted someone to be a moral and principled person, it was better not to tempt them with easy opportunities.

“Of course I’m not fine with it!... It’s just… if I have to murder my friends to survive, then what’s the point of all this power and knowledge? It’s not… it’s not how I want to live my life, okay?”

“He was Zorian Kazinski, third son of a minor merchant family from Cirin, accidental time traveler, and quite possibly the most powerful human mind mage in all of Altazia…”

“The Blacksmith awaited, his presence clouded by the encompassing heat. He was known as an Elder of legend who fashioned countless artefacts. Some were said to have found their way to the hands of Seeds, while others were given to the world of Minethria, waiting to be found once more. At first glance, I would have thought this being was a product of nature, a serendipitous result of rock formations and volcanic discharge that just so happened to form some likeness to man. But then this force of nature moved and struck a veined hammer to anvil, evoking sparks like a primordial god. The giant was made entirely out of molten rock, where glowing fire flowed between the cracks of the charred, sediment flesh. We were to the being what ants were to us, as a simple press of the glowing thumb could completely crush us. The Blacksmith was suspended in air, their lower half replaced by a spherical solid boulder, hooked chains spread from its corners and were mounted into the stone dome. Their beard was made of flame, like a perpetually burning nest that birthed ember; their head was entirely encased by a mould of rock except for the eyes that pierced out like smouldering coals. The Elder had four arms, two on either side, entirely of moulded earth with crags of lava running through.”

“I was like you once… I believed myself unstoppable, for if someone doesn’t fear death, then nothing can stop them. But there is more than one type of death. I know that now. I went to that place and managed to return. Shame: shame can be far worse than death.”

“Art impacts different people in different ways. The more sensitive an individual is, the more they may be affected. One way to overcome the resistance of such a troglodyte is to gather crowds to perform for. To see one’s neighbour be imbibed by emotion makes even the most uncultured person impressionable.—Higher teachings of the Muses, by Golanad Ricks.

“It’s not true fun unless you regret it immediately afterwards.

“Silly old girl, making such blunders at your age. It’s just as they say: you learn all your life and still die a fool.

“Learning a language is never a wasted effort, young man… It develops your mind and expands your horizons!

“As I was once taught, there are a million Paths in this world, but they can all be reduced to one: improve yourself. “For me, that meant a hunger to improve in the sacred arts. To fight greater battles and climb to greater heights. You may choose to improve in different ways, but for those of you who share my hunger, I intend to share a new technique with you.”

“[It’s every parent’s dream to see their little boy grow into such a fine young Dreadgod.]
“You’re not my parent.”
[Well, I don’t like your parents, so I choose to replace them.]”

“I have received more help than anyone in the universe. Even most of my power is stolen. There’s nothing noble about doing everything yourself. You just have to do your best to honor the help you’ve gotten.”

“Let me tell you a story of lost time and a month that refuses to end.”

‘Whenever men found it hard to justify success, they inevitably fell back on luck as the reason. And if the success was completely unimaginable to their feeble minds, they called it magic.’

‘They are all fascinating. They have talked to Gods, loved like animals, and written songs that would make Sister Mercy cry. Though we will never leave these hallowed walls to see them in person, yet through their tales, we will be their companions. You can look through any of our journals; access is not denied to any Matron. You are one of us now. Treat them with care, for it is your gift, child. Your welcome to the Ballad of the Fallen.’

“‘What do you call an angry sheep and an angry cow?’ Draupadi laughed, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Baaa... aaad moooo... ooood.’”

‘For a Hero of Light, he reckoned he cast a rather grim shadow. Hero. The word slithered nastily in his mind. An honour bestowed upon you when you had killed all those who would have called you a mass murderer.’

‘You have your sword, I have my mind. And a mind can be sharper than any Assyrian blade. We play with the gifts the Gods bestow upon us. And who are they to us? Either carpets to our thrones or casualties on the way.’

‘But Krishna liked that about her. It had made her… realistic about things. She laughed with the knowledge that it wasn’t meant to last, and cried with the self assurance that it was futile. She was like a glacier, relentless and implacable. But eyeing the letter from Panchal, he reckoned that sometimes even a vast glacier could crack into crevasses under deer hooves.’

‘Women are cursed to suffer, thought Draupadi. None can change that… not with complaints, or prayers, or revolution. But one can spit at life and dare it to hurt you more. Draupadi pondered over the likes of Satyabhama, Storm and the other Silver Wolves. Women who had taken charge of their destinies, women fighting their fate. A losing battle perhaps, but a fight nonetheless.’

‘Most ballads say that Luck is a Lady, naked and shapely, reserving her blessings for the most valiant and dashing of heroes. Perhaps this was so as the bards were usually Namins. If Karna had been asked to give his luck a shape, it would have been a female praying mantis, the creature that made love to its mate, then decapitated him and devoured his body for dinner.’

‘It is said that the greatest gift the Gods can give you is to forget about you. And Shishupal wanted nothing more than to spend his life unnoticed by the Gods. A life unnoticed by the Gods is boring and unimaginative, but a happy and long one. And he worked hard to make his life precisely thus.’

‘I know what I said of hate… But vengeance is a sword with a hilt made of jagged glass. You will bleed when you swing this sword. All those kings and their families that I butchered, brought me no peace. No happiness. No satisfaction. Take it from one who has suffered girl, do not walk that path.

‘A day may come when the courage of men fails… but it is not THIS day.’—Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

‘There are few things more dangerous than a man who has nothing to lose.’

‘The end justifies the means... Any end achieved through violence ends in a pit of despair. It is not a destination to aspire to, my friend.’

‘A man is not known by the promises he makes but by those he keeps.’

“We cannot know the price others pay for their good fortune.”

“When I was thirteen years old, I learned that when disaster arrives, it does so without omen or portent. The truly terrible moments strike us the way a roc strikes its prey— without warning, out of the clear blue sky.”

“People have admired rocs for centuries. Artists paint them, sculpt them, tell stories about them. I wanted to be one. I wanted to be the monster that kills other monsters.”

“My love was entirely possessive. When you love a person, you are expected to give them their freedom, but when you love a monster, you keep it caged. A monster can’t love you back, so there’s none of the guilt of a reciprocal relationship. You’re already subjugated. You’re already holding yourself captive in a cruel way, so you justify whatever unusual bonds you level in return.”

“A person might pass a tree on the path every day and not notice it until it springs fruit at a time they’re hungry.”

“And then she was aloft. It seems impossible, when you think about it. How something so huge can conquer gravity. But we’ve always known that rocs are more than mere birds. There’s a reason they’re the subject of myths, why they adorn royal crests and are carved into the sides of temples.”

“Human beings are bundles of emotion puppeting muscles like a marionette. We emote not only with our bodies, but with our very souls.”

“It’s a common mistake to assume that someone is weak because they are accommodating. If you think this, you might be the type who has no idea how much effort— how much strength— it takes to put up with your nonsense. Yumi wasn’t weak. She wasn’t a pushover. Don’t assume fragility where you should see patience.”

“Even small actions have consequences. And while we can often choose our actions, we rarely get to choose our consequences.”

“Leaving didn’t feel exciting. It felt heavy. Every child looked forward to the day when they could choose a different path from the one their parents were on. Tress sincerely hoped she hadn’t decided on one that led straight off a cliff.”

“It might seem that the person who can feel for others is doomed in life. Isn’t one person’s pain enough? Why must a person like Tress feel for two, or more? Yet I’ve found that the people who are the happiest are the ones who learn best how to feel. It takes practice, you know. Effort. And those who (late in life) have been feeling for two, three, or a thousand different people… well, turns out they’ve had a leg up on everyone else all along. Empathy is an emotional loss leader. It pays for itself eventually.”

“While a healthy measure of foolhardiness drove our ancestors toward discovery, fear kept them alive. If bravery is the wind that makes us soar like kites, fear is the string that keeps us from going too far. We need it, but the thing is, our heritage taught us to fear some of the wrong things.”

“Beyond that, memories have a way of changing on us. Souring or sweetening over time— like a brew we drink, then recreate later by taste, only getting the ingredients mostly right. You can’t taste a memory without tainting it with who you have become. That inspires me. We each make our own lore, our own legends, every day. Our memories are our ballads, and if we tweak them a little with every performance… well, that’s all in the name of good drama.”

“Memory is often our only connection to who we used to be. Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves. More potently, our minds are a hungry audience, craving only the peaks and valleys of experience. The bland erodes, leaving behind the distinctive bits to be remembered again and again. Painful or passionate, surreal or sublime, we cherish those little rocks of peak experience, polishing them with the ever-smoothing touch of recycled proxy living. In so doing— like pagans praying to a sculpted mud figure— we make of our memories the gods which judge our current lives. I love this. Memory may not be the heart of what makes us human, but it’s at least a vital organ. Nevertheless, we must take care not to let the bliss of the present fade when compared to supposedly better days. We’re happy, sure, but were we more happy then? If we let it, memory can make shadows of the now, as nothing can match the buttressed legends of our past… Do not let memory chase you. Take the advice of one who has dissected the beast, then rebuilt it with a more fearsome face— which I then used to charm a few extra coins out of an inebriated audience. Enjoy memories, yes, but don’t be a slave to who you wish you once had been. Those memories aren’t alive. You are.”

“Worldbringers like myself spend decades combing through folk tales, legends, myths, histories, and drunken bar songs looking for the most unique stories. We hunt for bravery, cleverness, heroism. And we find no shortage of such virtues. Legends are silly with them. But the person who is willing to reconsider their assumptions? The hero who can sit down and reevaluate their life? Well, now that is a gemstone that truly glitters, friend.”

“She… didn’t need to do this all on her own. That shouldn’t have been such a revelation for her. But after spending ages walking around with everyone piling bricks in your arms, it can throw you off balance when someone removes a brick to carry for you.”

“Now, most people would agree that humans are not telepathic. We can’t directly send our thoughts or emotions into the minds of others. Nevertheless, you can hear my story and imagine the things I describe—the same as I picture them in my own mind. What is that, if not a form of telepathy?”

“One of the great tragedies of life is knowing how many people in the world are made to soar, paint, sing, or steer— except they never get the chance to find out.”

“The first is that heroes can be trained. Not by a government or a military, but by the people themselves. Heroes are the ones who have thought about what they’re going to do, and who have trained to do it. Heroism is often the seemingly spontaneous result of a lifetime of preparation… In the frenzied anarchy of destruction, loyalty to causes and kingdoms alike tends to fall to the chaos. But the bond between people, well, that’s stronger than steel. If you want to create heroes, don’t give them something to fight for. Give them someone to fight for.”

“Ashes lay in drifts about the ruined splendor of the sanctum, mounded against the altar and about the feet of my divine ancestor, triumphant beneath the oculus far above. I wore no helmet then, and heard with my naked ears the roar of engines approaching. I felt the dead wind in my hair, and smelled the foul burning of the ashes of man.”

“The ugliness of the world does not fade, nor are fear and grief made less by time, nor is any suffering forgotten. We are only made stronger by its blows.”

“Time does not turn back, and not even the gods of night our pale enemy worshiped could grant my dearest wish.”

“We have need of heroes, however broken, however terrible, however insufficient they may be. And we have need of more than one hero, for heroes do break, you know.”

“I had loved Colchis when first I came to it, and loved parts of it still. But one cannot step into the same river twice, nor onto the same world. All things are always in motion. That is why it is the highest good and cause of civilization to preserve—to conserve—what is good. It is for that reason we plant new seeds, that if we might not preserve the trees, we might preserve the forest. If Earth is truly lost—as I believe—and not returning, then it is good that we plant her children across the stars.”

“The centuries, it seemed, had worn her down at last, and at the last she had found in the bottom of her soul a wish and want she’d never known was there.”

“But could I fault him in his thinking? Had I not thought much the same of myself, a hundred hundred times? Do we not all think this way sometimes—whatever our condition—and in a sense is it not true? Evil occurs because we are insufficient to challenge it. Too weak to stop it at the gates, too blind to see it bubbling within. Were we all angels in our virtue and heroes in our capacity, we might hold all chaos at bay, might stop even the unkindling of the stars. Yet we are but men. Even me.”

“My dead outnumbered my living—as becomes true for each of us in time. The dead become ever closer companions as we grow old ourselves and nearer eternity. And afterlife or no, they live on in us. Perhaps that is why it seems we have ghosts. Because we carry them in ourselves.”

“AMONG THE EXTRASOLARIANS, THEY say, there are men who take memories, who siphon them away in crystal phials and stopper them like djinni. But I could not seek their services, not and remain myself. I said once that a man is the sum of memories, and it is so. Thus, to discard those memories—however terrible—is to discard a part of ourselves.”

“Silent was my fury. A silence beyond words. Nothing endures, nor lasts forever. Not stone, not empires, not life itself. Even the stars will one day burn down—as I have seen and know perhaps better than any other man. Even the darkness that comes after all will one day pass away to new light. This record, too, and this warm scribe—my hand—perhaps, will fade. The stones here on Colchis shall fall into the sea, and the sea dissolve to foam. The stars shall burn the worlds to ash, and cool themselves to cinders. All things fade. Fall. Shatter. I raised a bleeding hand.”

“I told you once that the universe has no center, and thus every point is its center, and it is so. If I have strained you, reader, by my repeated insistence that every action matters, that every moment of every life is the moment, the axis about which all things turn, understand that I say these things because they are true. Every step, every turn, every refusal to step. Everything matters. The cosmos is not cold or indifferent because we are not indifferent, and we are a part of that cosmos, of that grand order which has dropped from the hand of He who created it. Every decision creates its ripples, every moment burns its mark on time, every action leads us ever nearer to that last day, that final last battle and the answer to that last question: Darkness? Or light?”

“I told you I came across it in Azimuth, and I remember following the smell to the shop. They called it a café. People just sat around drinking it from these little ceramic cups, and I had to try it, and… it was like drinking the feeling of being peaceful. Being peaceful in your mind. Well, not if you have too much, then it’s something else.”

“I apologize. Look, I am very bad at this. I don’t really know what I’m doing… This is what I know, what I’ve always known. I just want to know something else, now. To be something else. Everything I said was stupid. I, of all people, ought to know better than to assume anything based on what you were born as. Before you walk out, do you mind if I start over?”

“Right… and one thing I remember particularly well from our little chat was how much she hated assholes. You know, some people might consider any of her crew to be assholes, just because of the nature of the business. But I don’t think that way… I’ve got respect for people who have to get their hands dirty to get things done. That’s just work. No, it takes something special to be a real asshole, and I think she and I are of the same mind.”

“I was just thinking that you don’t have to forget who you were… because that’s what brought you here.”

“WHAT FLAMES COULD NOT CONSUME, NEVER SHALL BE EXTINGUISHED”