The Empire of Gold

Not wanting to be destroyed by despair doesn’t make you a coward. It makes you a survivor.

If you rule by violence, you should expect to be removed by violence.

I do not believe ambitious men who say the only route to peace and prosperity lies in giving them more power—particularly when they do it with lands and people who are not theirs.

She told me to keep myself whole. That there wasn’t any shame in taking care of yourself in order to help those who needed you.

You bet on whether or not I kissed your wife?" Ali was aghast. "What is wrong with the two of you?" When his brother and sister only cackled harder, he drew up. "I hate you. "I hate you both.

Luck is a fairy tale we use to make people feel better about the world being unfair as shit.

Find your happiness, little thief. Steal it and do not ever let it go.

I find I can get a more accurate measure of a man when he’s not aware he’s being appraised.

That made it worse, this passing of a barbed baton between women who, no matter how clever, how powerful, would always be known by the men to whom they were attached.

Dara hesitated and then spoke. “If what I have seen is true, it means there is peace for the worst of us. Rest for those who do not deserve it. It was beautiful. And it spoke to a mercy this world does not deserve.

I am who I am because of that human world. It wasn’t the Banu Nahida who’d driven the peris to their knees, it was the con artist of Cairo, and Nahri wouldn’t cast her away.

Nahri was a survivor, and it was time to get to work.

Every time I think there’s no lower our world can sink, we all plunge deeper.” “Some of us rise,” she countered.

Back at the Euphrates, when I asked if you wanted to continue, and you took my hand... would you do it again? Should I have stopped, returned you to Cairo — " Nahri instantly reached for his hand. "I would do it again, Dara. I would take your hand a thousand times over.

I find politics loathsome.” “Do you?” Muntadhir waved about the courtyard. “And what do you think all this is if not politics? I find that those who look on politics with contempt are usually the first to be dragged down by them.

You know, for all the lecturing I’ve heard about how emotional women supposedly are, we have nothing on the men I’ve known.

But I still believe, desperately, in the power of stories. If you take any message from this trilogy, I hope it is to choose what’s right even when it seems hopeless—especially when it seems hopeless. Stand for justice, be a light, and remember what it is we were promised by the One who knows better. With every hardship comes ease.

I envy you sometimes, she said softly. "I wish I had your faith in people's goodness." [Nahri e-Nahid]

For Nahri was going to bring forth a world in which her mother would have been free.

Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t.

It is not blasphemous to say this world is vast, that much of its history remains shrouded. There are things God set beyond our understanding.

Come now. Where is the woman who once braggingly picked a lock in Daevabad's library? I'd think you'd be delighted by the challenge." "Have you an actual plan or just wild fantasies that will end with our deaths?

She didn’t want to talk about any of this. She survived trauma by suppressing it, by shoving back the grief and rage that would otherwise swallow her whole.

It's supposed to be the mark of a wise leader, right? The willingness to make sacrifices for a greater good? But nobody ever asks those 'sacrifices' if they're willing - they get no say in whether or not their kids die for some supposed greater good." [Nahri e-Nahid]

For a people who honored the ascent and descent of the sun, marking the first and last glimpse of its burning orb with quiet gratitude to their Creator, this time farthest from its presence was meant for being safe and asleep with their loved ones, a fire altar burning to keep the demons out. But Dara had no loved ones and was a demon himself, so here he was.

I find that those who look on politics with contempt are usually the first to be dragged down by them

She wanted their certainty in a higher power, a meaning to the cruelly chaotic violence that plagued their world.

Dazed, he went through his ablutions. Then Ali stepped back, letting the crowd sweep him away as he surrendered to the familiar rhythm and movement of prayer. It was like slipping into oblivion, into bliss, muscle memory and the murmured song of sacred revelation relaxing his tightly wound emotions and offering a brief escape.

We have a verse like that - like what Nisreen said. We say God is the light of the heavens and the earth, that it's a light steady and protected as a lamp behind glass and shines as brightly as a star. That it is always there to guide us.