If we let it, memory can make shadows of the now, as nothing can match the buttressed legends of our past.
Whenever one does discover a moment of joy, beauty enters the world. Human beings, we can’t create energy; we can only harness it. We can’t create matter; we can only shape it. We can’t even create life; we can only nurture it.
Fleet kept running. He couldn’t win, but he kept running. And when the storm caught him, it didn’t matter that he’d died, because he’d run for all he had. We all die in the end, you see. So I guess what truly matters is just how well you’ve run.
Like the Saint says,” Kimmalyn said, “if you don’t have anything to say, you might scare your flightleader into thinking you’re dead.
A warrior fights. She does not yield, and she does not abandon her people.
I was pretty sure she was just mimicking me. And to be honest, I didn’t know if “she” was a she – weren’t slugs, like, both or something?
A knife can only be sharpened so far before all you are doing is wearing it away.
I bet the first time you had emotions, you babbled a lot and soiled your clothing.
Maybe you saw me there when you glanced at the rest of the room, to see what people look like when they actually have to work to get things.” He drew his lips to a line. It seemed I’d touched a nerve. Excellent. First blood.
Arrogant son of a supernova.
I found it interesting how humane things became once the people far up the command chain – the ones who didn’t have to bleed for the decisions they made – couldn’t force everyone into line.
Never do anything standing that you can do sitting, or anything sitting that you can do lying down.
Sometimes, continuing to breathe is a tough enough prospect.
That music the water makes,” she said. “Isn’t it the most wonderful sound ever?” “The most wonderful sound ever is the lamentations of my enemies, screaming my name toward the heavens with ragged, dying voices.
I don’t think I’d ever realized, until that moment, that a person could be beautiful and ugly at the same time. When you’re a teenage boy, you want the beautiful people to be truly beautiful. It’s hard to see otherwise, stupid as it sounds. I guess I owe her for that.” “It’s a lesson a lot of people never learn, Adolin.
Perhaps, unlike you, not all people are accustomed to turning every single item in their lives into a competition,” M-Bot said. “Oh, come on,” I said. “I’m not that bad.” “I recorded you trying to get Kimmalyn to have a tooth-brushing contest the other night in the barracks.” “Just a little fun,” I said. “Besides, gotta kill that plaque good and dead.
Resigned sigh.” I looped us after an enemy ship. “Did you just say the words resigned sigh?” “I find human nonlinguistic communications to be too easily misinterpreted,” he said. “So I’m experimenting with ways to make them more explicit.” “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?” “Obviously not. Dismissive eye-roll.
If bravery is the wind that makes us soar like kites, fear is the string that keeps us from going too far. We need it, but the thing is, our heritage taught us to fear some of the wrong things.
People are elastic, Wax thought. We can keep reshaping ourselves. And if we’re not quite the same as before, well, that’s good. It means we can grow.
How was I going to tell my boyfriend that half of me was now an interdimensional eldritch abomination from outside time and space? At the very least, was there maybe a less silly way of wording that?