Speaking Bones

And when the army has run out of enemies, it will manufacture them. War is a drug that creates an unquenchable thirst.

What Dara needs now is not the Doubt-Ender, but the emptiness of doubtful potential. When the heart has been cleansed by doubt, every hope becomes a possibility. I want to tell a story that the people don’t expect, a story of empathy that encompasses the world.

system is nothing unless it is reconstituted, act after act, generation after generation, by a free people who choose what they do based on full knowledge of the facts. You think you see far, but no individual, no matter how wise, can see as far as the compounded eyes of their children and their children; you have no power to foretell the future.

History has no plot, and kings do not follow characters arcs.

Glad to see your brain hasn't been entirely rotted by books.

... conscience is the only scale that can tell truth apart from lies, separate gold from dross. But conscience belongs to you and you alone, and can be calibrated by no philosophy or religion, only experience.

An image came unbidden to her mind: frozen foam flowers lifting off the tips of waves like dandelion seeds, brilliant crystal sparks in the wind and sun, barely glimpsed before being dashed to pieces on the beach. They huddled together, as though unaware of anything else in the grand universe, as though it was enough to have tinkled together, to have heard the music of one another's soul for a fraction of a moment.

Yet it was the fate of all mortals to end in dust. Whether it was the pédiato savaga or a mound of earth, every journey concluded in the disintegration of the flesh and the fading of our memories in the minds of those whom we touched.

Anything worth doing is at least a little bit mad,

We show our character not by the weapons we choose, but through the purpose for which we fight and manner in which we wield them.

Parents were always gods and heroes in the eyes of their children until they were revealed to be ordinary people with mortal failings, and children’s paths were defined in that moment when they vowed to correct the errors committed by their forbearers.

Every generation must compose its own destiny. There is no shirking of this duty. Teeth on the board.

We’re born into one family, but then we must build another for ourselves. As my big sister used to say, we’re always the heroes of our own stories.

Trust is reward with trust.

The subject of war was not a popular topic for the playhouses. In part, it was because Empress Jia’s well-known anti-militarism had chilled many performers from a politically sensitive topic. But the reluctance was also because the long years of peace had fostered a certain unspoken consensus among the literati: There was a collective sense of shame in the general prosperity of the Reign of Season of Storms, achieved only at the cost of paying tribute to the Lyucu and abandoning the people of Dasu and Rui to the mercy of the butchers. But there was no way to address the shame without confronting the cowardice and selfishness that lurked behind each individual mask of virtue. All in Dara were guilty.

The luckiest teachers are those who live to witness their students surpass them.

We do what is right not because we think we’ll succeed; we do so regardless of the consequences, good or bad.

There are worthier things for men than dying for great lords who recognize their talent, Rona. I prefer to live with the woman who touches my soul.

The best lies were made from truths.

When you wear a mask for too long,” said Risana, “sometimes it’s no longer possible to tell where the mask ends and the woman begins.

You’re entirely too obsessed with hot baths,” said Rati, shaking her head. “There are two kinds of people in the world,” said Kisli, “those who understand that the progress of civilization is measured by better ways to take baths, and barbarians.

The past wasn’t dead. It cried to be reborn.

It’s better to mistakenly honor an enemy than to neglect the reverence due those who died so that we may live,

Grief, like snow, had to yield before the quickening demands of life, the compulsion to go on.

I only know that the world is too large, too beautiful, too interesting to let one act define us. Death only triumphs when we stop learning and growing. So long as our lungs sing with the gift of life, we cannot cease to give back to Life.

There seems to be nothing but the terror of death in this world; death is the one single truth against which all courage and struggle is vanity. Why doesn’t everyone just give up?

This was the mortal condition, she realized. She would never know with certainty the right path; she would never experience enough to act with absolute conviction; she would never be able to eliminate all suffering. All she could do was to act in the here and now, to live and die for love, to fight and battle for friendship, to trust in a conscience that was never perfect but capable of being perfected, to scintillate in the bright light of winter on the frozen beach suspended between the eternal ocean and the inconstant land for the brief instant allotted to us all.