Fuyumi Ono · 656 pages
Rating: (793 votes)
“It doesn't take any effort to dream. It's a lot easier than looking at the problems in front of you and figuring out what you're going to do about them. But all you're doing is putting your problems up on a shelf for later, right? That doesn't make them go away.”
“And that's when I realized that there's really two ways people cry. You cry when you're sorry for yourself, and then you cry when you are really sad. The tears you cry for yourself? Those are kid tears. You're crying because you want somebody to help you or pick you up. Your mom, your dad, the old lady next door... anyone.”
“When people felt pain time and time again, they came to fear that pain above all other things. So they tried to ignore it, to forget it was happening, as a way of bearing it. And pretty soon, they would come to feel like they'd accomplished something just by doing that -- even though nothing had changed.”
“I think that once you're born, the thing you have to do is find out who you are and live that life as well as you can. You can't spend your time wondering how things would have been if you were someone different.”
“A throne is always paid for in blood.
The king of En had told her that once. Even should a king's ascension be bloodless as a gift from Heaven, to hold onto one's throne invariably meant that blood must flow -- as it had at the beginning, in the fight against the false king's armies, and the quelling of civil war, and the execution of criminals.
Luckily, the fighting part was easy for Yoko. All she had to do was resist the temptation to run away.”
“I do not need a scabbard to sheathe my mind.”
“There are some things in this world you can never get back... There's no reclaiming that piece of the past. Don't you think it'd be better to abandon it completely and consider instead what you did wrong and learn from it?”
“To worry is to become accessible, unwittingly accessible. And once you worry you cling to anything out of desperation; and once you cling you are bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever you are clinging to.”
“I dream of things I know nothing about.”
“When once it is no longer possible to understand how a man gives his life for his country--and the time will come--then all is over with that faith also, and the idea of the Fatherland is dead; and then, perhaps, we shall be envied, as we envy the saints their inward and irresistible strength.”
“But besides I haven’t the time: I’m too busy trying to see that you don’t lose any of the money I married you for.” I kissed her.”
“Men do not understand how women think, and vice versa; each tries to make the other act more like a member of their own sex.”
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