Children in the future were going to insist my adventures were too outlandish – and therefore I wasn’t an actual historical person, but one that was obviously made up, like Gilgamesh or David Bowie.
Empathy is an emotional loss leader. It pays for itself eventually.
Honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men!
Our words, like our hearts, are weapons still hot from the forging, beating themselves into new shapes each time we swing them.
Lock a man in prison, and you might stop him from committing crimes. Teach a man to respect himself and his community, and you stopped everyone he might have taught, recruited, or bullied.
I didn’t know enough about human politics to know who was correct, but I did know enough about politics in general to guess that everyone would interpret the law in the way that best suited themselves.
Maybe it doesn’t matter what he thinks. It’s hard to feel that, but I can say it. That feels like a different kind of lying. One that’s not all untrue.
I could not become a dragon. I am an utter and complete failure.
Deal with your own stupid planet, you idiot. Don’t make me come over there and slap you around again.
I told you that I understood crazy,” Chet said. “I was wrong. Thank you for the master class.
There was safety in being the one everyone else looked to. I felt everything, but I didn’t want anyone to know it.
That,” Cobb said, “was somehow the most embarrassing and inspiring display I’ve ever seen out of cadets! You should be ashamed. And proud.
After living with the enemy,” I admitted, “I learned it wasn’t so simple. I didn’t discover that their cause was just, mind you. Only that most of them weren’t evil. They were merely people. Following, by accident, someone who was evil.
I was Spensa, and my soul was fire.
There’s always an opposition, you see. A Push for every Pull, an old adversary of mine always says. Sometimes the moments in our life pile up and become an unstoppable force that makes us change. But at other times they become a mountain impossible to surmount.
It happens in the epilogues. The stories after the stories. Warriors who have fought return home, but find they no longer belong. The battle has changed them, warped them, to the point where they are strangers. They protected the society they love, but in doing so, made themselves into something that could never again belong to it.
I couldn’t remember what it felt like to laugh. I wondered if that meant I had already drowned.
Everyone shut up and listen!” Steris snapped. “Or I will barf on the table to get your attention!” The entire room stared at her. “I’ll do it,” she warned. “I keep medication in my handbag to produce the effect. You’d be surprised at how often the option is relevant.
You command respect by being who you are.” My face got warm. “I don’t feel like that,” I said. “Yeah,” Rig said. “I guess none of us really believe the good things about ourselves, do we?
I feel like I should tell you,” Jorgen said over the radio, “that I now have a slug on each shoulder and three on my lap, all seeming vaguely uncomfortable that I’m touching them. I blame you, FM.