“She would have kissed him, if she kissed stupid men.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Trickster's Queen
“There is power and there is power, my dear. My power can be vast, in the right places.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Trickster's Queen
“Nawat grinned. “I was helping to steal soldiers who couldn't keep up.”
“What do you do with them?” she asked, curious. “I haven't heard of bodies being found.”
“Nor will you,” Nawat informed her, sitting on a corner of the worktable. “They were still alive when we gave them to my warriors at the edge of the jungle.”
He picked up Aly's hand and laced his fingers with hers. “My warriors will be able to say they last saw the missing soldiers alive, when the troops went on a visit to the jungle.”
Aly walked her free fingers over their entwined hands. “But why would Crown soldiers visit the jungle?”
“They didn't think they would at first,” Nawat admitted. “So my warriors show them the beauties of the deep jungle. They take away all the things the soldiers have of the civilized world, such as clothes and weapons and armor, so the soldiers will appreciate the jungle with their entire bodies. But my warriors have seen jungle before, so they get bored and leave. The soldiers stay longer.”
“Like the tax collectors,” Aly whispered, awed by the beauty of what he described. “Take away all they have and leave them to survive the jungle. If you're questioned under truthspell, you can say they were alive when you left them. And the only way they could survive naked out there . . .”
Nawat was shaking his head. Aly nodded. “I take it you don't leave them near any trails.”
“They are there to appreciate the jungle that has been untouched by humans,” Nawat told her, a teacher to a student who did not quite understand.
Aly sighed. “I am limp with envy,” she told him. “Simply limp.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Trickster's Queen
“I imbue this place with my essence, every stone and every drop. My visit will do wonders for the flowers."
Aly propped her chin on her hand. "So does manure," she observed.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Trickster's Queen
“The god inside the man glanced at Aly. "This is your chessboard, I believe, my dear."
Aly beamed at him. "So it is. And the game begins.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Trickster's Queen
“I wanted to have something good to remember about today,” she replied quietly. “Something that wasn't petty and mean. Sometimes you have to provide such moments yourself.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Trickster's Queen
“At the house, the gathering broke up quickly. Sarai announced that she had a headache and needed to lie down. Without her to hold them together, the young nobles chose to go home. The gloss had been stripped from the afternoon.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Trickster's Queen
“College costs money- a lot. Yet education in itself is not of much value. For example, we can look to the general public's almost complete disregard for anything that educated people have to say about global warming, shrinking oil reserves, pollution, or the threat of nuclear annihilation. But if all this is true, why does something as worthless as a college diploma cost so much money?”
― quote from The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
“Why should caring for others begin with the self? There is an abundance of rather vague ideas about this issue, which I am sure neuroscience will one day resolve. Let me offer my own “hand waving” explanation by saying that advanced empathy requires both mental mirroring and mental separation. The mirroring allows the sight of another person in a particular emotional state to induce a similar state in us. We literally feel their pain, loss, delight, disgust, etc., through so-called shared representations. Neuroimaging shows that our brains are similarly activated as those of people we identify with. This is an ancient mechanism: It is automatic, starts early in life, and probably characterizes all mammals. But we go beyond this, and this is where mental separation comes in. We parse our own state from the other’s. Otherwise, we would be like the toddler who cries when she hears another cry but fails to distinguish her own distress from the other’s. How could she care for the other if she can’t even tell where her feelings are coming from? In the words of psychologist Daniel Goleman, “Self-absorption kills empathy.” The child needs to disentangle herself from the other so as to pinpoint the actual source of her feelings.”
― Frans de Waal, quote from The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
“So many people are gone that I can’t even mourn them properly. It would take every hour of every day to do it. I want to hold on to them, to think of them, but I would never get any living done if I gave them all the time they deserve. Especially now, when we’re barely living as it is—barely surviving. I hug Ana’s bag to my chest and sob. I cry over the things in my dead friend’s bag and for all the things we’ve lost so far. I don’t know why I thought saving my tears for Alaska was a good idea. It was stupid as fuck. There’s no point in saving things for later if later never comes.”
― Sarah Lyons Fleming, quote from All the Stars in the Sky
“No matter how deep in disgrace, a human being IS human, after all.”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha
“There is such a thing as too much loss. Too much has been taken from you both - taken and taken and taken, until there's nothing left but hope, and you've given that up because it hurts too much. Until you would rather die, or kill, or avoid attachments altogether, than lose one more thing.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Obelisk Gate
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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