“I need to get at Fate’s design in this. What exactly does it want of me? Did it pick me? Because Miss Brown…” he began with a calm warning. “I worked for Fate in the past. I slaved my ass off for her. Then she handed me over to Irony, a cruel bastard with a shit eating grin, and I worked for him too. I slaved for both, all my life, without stop, without wavering. I was a good employee to the universe. And then one day, I quit,” he said. “I’ve been MIA for near a decade. And it seems… I’ve been found.” She”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Reginald Bones: Part One
“You sound defensive. Do you think everybody is accusing you? Does your guilt demand everybody accuse you?” She looked down. “I don’t even need to see your eyes to know they’re loaded with shame.” She”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Reginald Bones: Part One
“How you like them stupids, Mr. Bones? Oh, your eyes say not a whole lot,” she mocked. Her breathless words said she’d taken a big risk and was prepared to accept the consequences. “Not so fun having your demons poked at, huh? Maybe I’ll get my tongue in your mouth next time and really tickle your devils.”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Reginald Bones: Part One
“Little shit. You can jack off, Bones said. As long as you’re not thinking of a woman. “Awwww, thank you Bonesy. Maybe we can pick up the latest edition of Playdog magazine. I bet the bald pussycats really get the hummer going.” Bones”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Reginald Bones: Part One
“Are you crazy?" The unexpected question threw him a moment. "I guess… if I was, I might not know it. And if I did know… I might not want to say." She”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Reginald Bones: Part One
“Bones informed dryly, watching him arrange his study tools just perfectly. You know there is a name for what you're doing. I believe it's called ... Bones tapped his temple. Something, something, disorder. "Very funny," Reginald muttered in a sing song tone. "You should try actually paying attention when I study. If you did, you'd know it's called obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, but that's not what I'm doing. This is simply me being exactly orderly." Right.”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Reginald Bones: Part One
“Scratch her arm? “No, she’s picking at her skin. It's a symptom," Reginald said. "One in the OCD family. It's called Dermatillomania or Excoriation. Often due to stress or anxiety, or depression." Or an STD.”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Reginald Bones: Part One
“A Great Rabbi stands, teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.
There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine - a Speaker for the Dead - has told me of two other Rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.
The Rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. 'Is there any man here,' he says to them, 'who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?'
They murmur and say, 'We all know the desire, but Rabbi none of us has acted on it.'
The Rabbi says, 'Then kneel down and give thanks that God has made you strong.' He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, 'Tell the Lord Magistrate who saved his mistress, then he'll know I am his loyal servant.'
So the woman lives because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.
Another Rabbi. Another city. He goes to her and stops the mob as in the other story and says, 'Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.'
The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. ‘Someday,’ they think, ‘I may be like this woman. And I’ll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her as I wish to be treated.’
As they opened their hands and let their stones fall to the ground, the Rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head and throws it straight down with all his might it crushes her skull and dashes her brain among the cobblestones. ‘Nor am I without sins,’ he says to the people, ‘but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead – and our city with it.’
So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.
The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis and when they veer too far they die. Only one Rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation.
So of course, we killed him.
-San Angelo
Letters to an Incipient Heretic”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Speaker for the Dead
“Saint Paul said the invisible must be understood by the visible. That was not a Hebrew idea, it was Greek.”
― Edith Hamilton, quote from Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
“Three forty-five-pound plates on each side of what Kenji told me is an Olympic bar, which weighs an additional forty-five pounds. I can't stop staring. I don't think that I've ever been more attracted to him in all the time I've known him."
"So this gets you going, huh?"
...
"I've never seen him in sweatpants before..."
...
"I bet you've seen him in a lot less.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Ignite Me
“Be honest: Are you surprised that I didn't realize sooner? Are you surprised that it took me so long to even /think/ the word -- death? Dying? Dead?
Do you think I was being stupid? Naive?
Try not to judge. Remember that we're the same, you and me.
I thought I would live forever too.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Before I Fall
“When a girl cries, few things are more worthless than a boy.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from The Darkest Minds
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