We are marching toward death as soon as we are born. The only hope a man has is that his family line will remain, that his sons will go forward to father more sons, and that his name will be remembered by them.
Horns not grown, he swings his head in warning and still all take heed.
No one truly understands a prophecy until it comes true.
I’d never been so hurt, and I couldn’t tell if it was what he had said or how I had reacted to it. Stupid boy. Of course I’d get angry and demand to know who had said such horrid things.
There’s a difference between thinking an action is wise and doing it.
That is half of teaching an apprentice: making sure the youngster learns what you said, not what she thinks you said.
I need a friend, and I have none to whom I can admit my weakness, my fear, my errors.
Death is always at the edge of now.
The White Prophet and the Catalyst!” she cried in disgust. “Rather name them as they are, the Fool and the Idiot. Of all the careless, foolish things to do!
Little Brother, do not treat me as if I am already dead, or dying. If you see me that way, then I would rather truly be dead. You steal the now of my life away, when you constantly fear that tomorrow will bring my death. Your fears clutch cold at me and snatch all my pleasure in the day’s warmth from me.
Make up your mind. Is Death a friend? Then go joyfully to hunt with it, as I did. If it’s an enemy, then fight it. But don’t sag here like a wounded cow waiting for predators to finish it off. You are not prey, nor I! If we must die, let us die as wolves!
I was confused, thinking that my pain and my loss were one and the same thing, whereas one was but a symptom of the other.
Don’t think of the obstacles that lie between now and the moment when we confront him.” The ship spoke in a low, soft voice. “Long or short, if you worry about every step of a journey, you will divide it endlessly into pieces, anyone of which may defeat you. Look only to the end.
Some things cannot be solved,” he pointed out philosophically. “Drink makes those things much more tolerable.
Some people say there is relief in the sharing of cares and pains. To me there was no catharsis, only an unearthing of rotting corpses of memories, a baring of still suppurating wounds.
Sometimes it seems worrying is something I feel like I have to do, that maybe worrying about them actually keeps them alive and real.
Today! Today! Tomorrow begins today!
When Hap had been ten, it had been so much easier to know that I was doing the right things for him. Feed him well, teach him to fish, see that he had clean clothes and slept well at night. That was most of what a boy needed. A young man was a different animal entirely.
Children, I have found, are much more swift to accept the unusual. They admit their curiosity, you see, rather than disdaining the object that arouses it.
You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man’s fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man’s whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this nought of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draught.