The Pillars of Creation

Charity, if you have the means, is a personal choice, but charity which is expected or compelled is simply a polite word for slavery.

When the whole world is crazy, it doesn't pay to be sane.

Wizard's Seventh Rule Life is the future, not the past.

If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so.

You don't love me, Sebastian. You don't have any idea what love really is. You can't love anyone or anything until you love your own existence, first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life. When you love yourself, your own existence, then you love someone who can enhance your existence, share it with you, and make it more pleasurable. When you hate yourself and believe your existence is evil, then you can only hate, you can only experience the shell of love, that longing for something good, but you have nothing to base it in but hatred. You taint the very concept of love, Sebastian, with your corrupted longing for it. You want me only to justify your hatred, to be your partner in self-loathing.

You can't love anyone or anything until you love your own existence first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life.

Life is the future, not the past. The past can teach us, through experience, how to accomplish things in the future, comfort us with cherished memories, and provide the foundation of what has already been accomplished. But only the future holds life. To live in the past is to embrace what is dead. To live life to its fullest, each day must be created a new.

It was important for a person not to let their body or mind become slow and dull. Oba believed it was important to learn new things. He believed it was important to grow. He thought it was important for a person to use what they had learned. That was how people grew.

The woman had a voice that could unwind a good rope.

The ground was soaked with blood. What had been Clovis was no longer remotely recognizable. His jaw was shattered and hung completely unhinged to the side. One eye socket had been altogether caved in. Oba’s knee had broken the man’s sternum and crushed his chest. It was glorious.