“Is there anyone’s life story you don’t want to know?”
“Not really.” His expression was unexpectedly serious. “Because people make a story of their lives.
Gains, losses, tragedy and triumph—you can tell a lot about someone simply by what they put into each
category. You can learn a lot about what you put into each category by your reaction to them. They
teach you about yourself without ever intending to do it—and they teach you a lot about life.”
“No...if the world demanded their deaths in return for safety, she would have watched it burn.”
“And I’ll stop with the lecture now. I don’t like people much—they irritate and annoy me. But I’m
fascinated by them anyway.”
“I don’t like people much—they irritate and annoy me. But I’m fascinated by them anyway.”
“They feared you, and love can’t exist when there’s that much fear.”
“But she only knew one way of conquering fear, and that was to charge into it, blindly.”
“The children watch,' she added softly. As if the children were the keepers of all conscience. And maybe, Kaylin thought, just maybe, they were a good keeper. To protect your children, you struggled with your anger, mastered it. Your struggled to explain away your fear, or theirs. There probably wasn't all that much difference, in the end. You worked hard to be worthy of the trust they so carelessly - and completely - placed in you.”
“complaining about life’s little miseries was one of the few conversational luxuries people were allowed, and at the moment, Kaylin couldn’t put herself behind complaint.”
“They’re humanity writ small, and many of them haven’t learned how to hide, how to pretend to know things they don’t know, how to doubt the things they want to believe in.”
“They did nothing—other than subjecting us to complete nothingness. For, as is well known, nothing on earth puts more pressure on the human mind than nothing.”
“The boy who’d saved her from drowning in more ways than one.”
“in this life, living, there is no dignity except perhaps in laughter.”
“And I think it was a great Frenchman, Voltaire, who said that the beginning of wisdom is the moment when one understands how little concerned with one’s own life are other men, they who are so desperately preoccupied with their own. I knew nothing about you and that boy, nothing at all.”
“There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.”
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