“To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that’s not how a person with integrity acts.”
“To allow someone, anyone, to suffer is the greatest sin there is.”
“What a sad thing men are. Can’t do nothing good without being so weak we have to mess it up. Can’t build something up without tearing it down. It ain’t the Spackle that drove us to the end. It was ourselves.”
“Roads is never the fastest way to get nowhere,” the woman says. “Don’t ye know that?”
“History ain’t so important when yer just trying to survive,” I say, spitting it out under my breath. “That’s actually when it’s most important,” Hildy says,”
“But then there’s her eyes and they look at you and don’t brook no arguments, don’t look like they ever doubt themselves, even when they should. Maybe they’re the eyes of a giant after all.”
“But guessing a thing ain’t knowing a thing.”
“I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it’s dangerous, too, that it’s painful and risky, that it’s making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?”
“But there’s always hope,” Ben says. “You always have to hope.”
“War is a monster,” he says, almost to himself. “War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows.” He’s looking at me now. “And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.”
“But while admiring my neighbour, I don't think I shall ever try to follow in her steps, my talents not being of the energetic and organising variety, but rather of that order which makes their owner almost lamentably prone to take up a volume of poetry and wander out to where the kingcups grow, and, sitting on a willow trunk beside a little stream, forget the very existence of everything but green pastures and still waters, and the glad blowing of the wind across the joyous fields.”
“I saw a small square of paper, folded over on itself and sealed with a blob of wax from the candle by my bed. Cracking it open, I recognized Kiernan’s hand.
Don’t you dare get up until you’re rested! When you are, send one of those message lights and I’ll come. In the meantime, I’ll talk to O., see if she remembers anything about last night. And I’ll find out if anyone saw M. or N. wandering the palace last night. Don’t frown like that! I’ll be sly.
I was frowning, I realized, which made me let out an irritated huff of breath. He knew me too well.”
“Assholes are like weeds, a bitch to get rid of and when you do another one grows back in its place.”
“A husband can hurt your feelings, be inconsiderate, uncaring, abusive, irritating, or negligent. He can say or do things that pierce your heart like a sliver. And every time you start to pray for him, you find the sliver festering. It’s obvious you can’t give yourself to praying the way God wants you to until you are rid of it.”
“Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.”
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