Quotes from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Revenge is the easiest of emotions to understand and to manipulate.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“She would never be caught unprepared again, she swore to herself. She would never trust. Never love. Never put faith in other human beings again. She would learn all she could of the shape and substance of the world, and she would find a way to survive in it.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“She realized that she had naïvely believed that the workings of the world revolved around her and her family. Never before had she acknowledged that somebody else’s life might alter hers.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“You've got to understand that the world's full of men who are little better than animals.... Problem is that a man is different from an animal. In the quiet afterward we know when we've done wrong.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“I sleep lightly and tread to keep my head out of the sea of dreams.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“She realized that the world was a dance of a million fates. In this dance she was but a single soul.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“One must find rhythms others’ ears don’t hear.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“I believe that if you speak from your heart each time you open your mouth, you cannot go wrong.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“She was a nightmare of beauty and menace living right there above them, a being part raptor, part human, part divine. She knew without question that she could sweep down on them and inflict upon all of them a terrible vengeance if she wished. She had the capacity for violence within her, residing beside her heart.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Respect flows two ways and can mean as much to the giver as to the one receiving.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Imagine, they said, living an existence where the words out of your mouth changed the very fabric of the world around you.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Again he thought of his own losses, and he wondered why it was that the things a person had lost— or might lose— defined him more than the things he yet possessed.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“They fed him a diet made up entirely of knowledge.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Who can explain just how he became the person he is? It does not happen this day or that one. It is a gradual evolution that happens largely unheralded. He simply was who he now was.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“She said, A king is the best and worst of men. Of course. Of course.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“When she spread her wings and leaped screeching into the air she had not the slightest doubt that every hand below her would stretch to catch her. And if one could leap from a height with no fear of falling, could one not be said to possess the secret of flight? Just like a bird, just like a god.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“She sat, rediscovering the fullness of her first tongue in one long submersion. Again and again she would pause on a word Melio uttered. She would roll it around in her mind, feeling the contours of it. At times her mouth gaped open, her lips moving as if she were drinking in his words instead of breathing.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Very little of what he learned of people’s actions began or ended with either the noble ideals or the fiendish wickedness he had been taught lay behind all great struggles. There was something comforting in this.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein

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Popular quotes

“Their lives had been the tragedy of one woman who couldn’t make up her mind.”
― Winston Graham, quote from Warleggan

“In the end, the only 'good name' that matters is not how men feel about us, but how God feels about us.”
― John Piper, quote from Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ

“Can I ask a stupid question?"
"Sure. Ask away."
"It's sort of more than one question. But... Look, um... Why do we hurt? Why do we die? Why isn't life good all the time? Why isn't it fair?"
"Those aren't stupid questions, Hazel. For some people they're the only questions that matter."
"Does that mean you won't answer them?"
"Sure, I'll answer. But it's kind of a big subject, and it's got lots of answers, and the answers don't really mean anything-- They aren't stupid questions but they could just as well be 'When is purple?' or 'Why does Thursday?', if you see what I mean..."
"Not really."
"Well, I think some of it is probably contrasts. Light and Shadow. If you never had the bad times, how would you know you had the good times? But some of it is just: If you're going to be Human, then there are a whole load of things that come with it. Eyes, a Heart, Days and Life.
It's the moments that illuminate it, though. The times you don't see when you're having them... They make the rest of it matter.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Death: The Time of Your Life

“Q. But it seems to me there are circumstances that simply induce one to have negative emotions!

A. This is one of the worst illusions we have. We think that negative emotions are produced by circumstances, whereas all negative emotions are in us, inside us. This is a very important point. We always think our negative emotions are produced by the fault of other people or by the fault of circumstances. We always think that. Our negative emotions are in ourselves and are produced by ourselves. There is absolutely not a single unavoidable reason why somebody else's action or some circumstance should produce a negative emotion in me. It is only my weakness. No negative emotion can be produced by external causes if we do not want it. We have negative emotions because we permit them, justify them, explain them by external causes, and in this way we do not struggle with them.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“Ben Franklin advises his grandson not to let even the American Revolution interrupt his studies, urging of young adulthood, "This is the time of life in which you are to lay the foundations of your future improvement and of your importance among men. If this season is neglected, it will be like cutting off the spring from the year.”
― H.W. Brands, quote from The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

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