You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I tire of your whining.
The Cloud Roads has wildly original worldbuilding, diverse and engaging characters, and a thrilling adventure plot. It’s that rarest of fantasies: fresh and surprising, with a story that doesn’t go where ten thousand others have gone before. I can’t wait for my next chance to visit the Three Worlds!
The priest’s lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal’s doom. My grandmother’s lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.
There is no logic to grief.
We worship Him not because He is the best of our gods, but because He is, or was, the greatest killer among them.
For all those that have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.
I think,” Hoa says slowly, “that if you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back.
Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.
Tell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among us, no matter how we treat them. Tell them they must earn the respect which everyone else receives by default. Them them there is a standard for acceptance; that standard is simply perfection. Kill those who scoff at those contradictions, and tell the rest that the dead deserved annihilation for their weakness and doubt. Then they’ll break themselves trying for what they’ll never achieve.
But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them – even if, in truth, their victims couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.
Being useful to others is not the same thing as being equal.
They’re afraid because we exist, she says. There’s nothing we did to provoke their fear, other than exist. There’s nothing we can do to earn their approval, except stop existing – so we can either die like they want, or laugh at their cowardice and go on with our lives.
But for a society build on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.
When we say “the world has ended,” it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine. But this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. For the last time.
Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.
This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable, and safe, for years.
After all, a person is herself, and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one’s being. I am me, and you.
How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past?
But if you stay, no part of this comm gets to decide that any part of this comm is expendable. No voting on who gets to be people.
There is an art to smiling in a way that others will believe. It is always important to include the eyes; otherwise, people will know you hate them.