The Last Mortal Bond

Pain is suffering because we want to be free of it, and pleasure is suffering because we fear to lose it. Fools search for freedom, but there is no freedom. There is only the embrace.

It was strange the way that people venerated truth. Everyone seemed to strive for it, as though it were some unalloyed good, a perfect gem of glittering rectitude. Women and men might disagree about its definition, but priests and prostitutes, mothers and monks all mouthed the word with respect, even reverence. No one seemed to realize how stooped the truth could be, how twisted and how ugly.

Hope, as usual, proved to be a miserable bitch.

The mind is a flame. Blow it out, or it will blind you.

The more you try to see, the less you will notice.

If the people are foolish, he said, it is because their leader has failed them.

sometimes goodness and nobility aren’t enough. Sometimes, when the monsters come, you need a dark, monstrous thing to pit against them.

some truths were jagged as a rusty blade, horrible, serrated, irremovable, lodged forever in the insubstantial substance of the soul.

Never speak to a crowd. Her father’s words, measured and steady. Especially not a crowd of thousands. Always speak to a single person.

You had to admire her, and you had to do it fast, because she was about to get all kinds of killed.

Live now. The future is a dream. Triste

Sometimes you need to break a thing,” the Flea said finally, “in order to see what’s inside it.

Two moments,” he replied quietly, “out of twenty-four years.” “The moments are all that matter, Jak. People talk about lifetimes, but lifetimes are built out of moments. The decisions we make, the ones that matter, the ones that get people killed or keep them alive…” She snapped her fingers. “They’re that fast.

A roar erupted in his throat, a cry that had been surging up through all the fabric of his flesh since Ha Lin died, rising and growing until it seemed too large for the body that contained it, as though that body had dissolved beneath the pain and the rage, leaving behind a man that was not a man at all, but a scream in the shape of a man, a sob of fury dying to shake free its last mortal bond.

Your words are boxes built too small to hold the truth.

Nira snorted. “Just when you were creepin’ toward the border a’ smart, ya had to fuck it up by jumpin’ back into a whole bucket a’ stupid.

Power appeared to be something that a ruler had, that she held, that she had taken from the people. The appearance was false. Power was something people gave, gave willingly, even if they didn’t know it, even if they resented it.

The coin you’re so eager to give away was held by other hands before yours. For you to give it so freely, you had to seize it first.

It is a meager freedom that leaves no scars

Like waves, men and women exist only in motion, in change. Put them on the page, and you have already failed. And

Sometimes, when the monsters come, you need a dark, monstrous thing to pit against them.

I had lived my life, lived it and loved it, made peace with the pains, framed a thousand thousand memories. It seemed all done except for the remembering. And then Rallen came and said that I could be nineteen again.” “You can’t,” Gwenna said, more harshly than she’d intended. Delka just smiled. “I know that.” She shrugged. “But can you blame me for wanting?

Where is the justice,” Triste demanded, “in murdering men in their sleep? Where is the justice in killing children? In cutting down the good along with the evil?” “Precisely there—Ananshael spares no one. Emperor or orphan, slave or sovereign, priest or prostitute—he comes for us all.

to the bars of her cage. “It’s a good

It had seemed an awful fate once, being stuck in that endless black. That was before the blade had taught Valyn hui'Malkeenian a greater, more terrible truth: the outer dark, for all its horrors - the old, cold dark of caverns or the bottomless dark of the dead - it was nothing when set beside the darkness bled into poisoned flesh and carved across ruined eyes, a darkness of the self.

See the world', he told himself, taking a long breath then letting it out, 'not your dream of the world'. [Kaden]

The washouts and the Grounded might be prisoners, but it was starting to feel as though everyone was a prisoner of something: duty or family, conscience or past mistakes.

My father told me something once. I haven’t forgotten it: If the people are foolish, he said, it is because their leader has failed them.

Yurl and Valyn were both rich, both nobility, and even the unending rigors of Kettral training hadn’t yet managed to wash the stink of privilege off either of them.

He could remember a time when darkness had been a quality of the world itself, a thing of the sky when the sun sagged below the horizon and the light leaked out; a thing of the sea when you dove deep enough for the weight of the salt water to smother the shine; a thing of castle keeps and caves after someone snuffed the last lamp and the great stone space went black. Even the darkness of Hull’s Hole, that absolute absence of light filling the cave’s snaking chamber: you went into it, then you came out. Or if you failed to come, if the slarn tore you apart, then you slid into the longer darkness of death. It had seemed an awful fate once, being stuck in that endless black. That was before the blade had taught Valyn hui’Malkeenian a greater, more terrible truth: the outer dark, for all its horrors - the old, cold dark of caverns or the bottomless dark of the dead - it was nothing when set beside the darkness carried inside, a darkness bled into poisoned flesh and carved across ruined eyes, a darkness of the self.