Do you truly believe suicide belongs solely to the one taking his or her own life? All that rot about selfishness and self-hatred? The lies we tell ourselves to absolve us of all blame, of all the roles that we played in that wretched death?
Take any segment of population, impose strict yet clear definitions on their particular characteristics, then target them for compliance. Bribe the weak to expose the strong. Kill the strong, and the rest are yours. Move on to the next segment.
To mourn is to feel a flower’s slow death, hill bear. To bed a man is to recall the flower’s bright glory.
Strings glared at his new corporal. ‘Where’d you learn that skill?’ The man shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Don’t like getting hit.’ ‘Well, do you ever counter-attack?’ Tarr frowned. ‘Sure. When they’re tired.
There were looks that killed, and then there were looks that conducted torture.
After all, tyranny has no sense of humour. Too thin-skinned, too thoroughly full of its own self-importance.
Our education system no longer teaches empathy,’ Sam said. ‘Now, if everybody in college had to take a minor in Literature, the world would be a better place.
Evil is at its boldest when it walks an unerring path.
The historian, now witness, stumbling in the illusion that he will survive. Long enough to set the details down on parchment in the frail belief that truth is a worthwhile cause. That the tale will become a lesson heeded. Frail belief? Outright lie, a delusion of the worst sort. The lesson of history is that no one learns.
The bully’s greatest terror,′ Bugg said, ‘comes when he meets someone bigger and meaner –.
Power may have ten thousand faces, but the look in the eyes of every one of them is the same.
Sometimes,’ Brys ventured, ’when nothing can be shared except regret, then regret must serve as the place to begin. Reconciliation does not demand that one side surrender to the other. The simple, mutual recognition that mistakes were made is in itself a closing of the divide.
A true believer, indeed, need never draw a weapon, need never rise in argument, or howl in fury, or make fists, or roll in a mob to crush some helpless, innocent enemy. A true believer needs none of those things. How much of the world insists on living this lie?
He rubbed at his face, as if seeking to awaken the right words from muscle, blood and bone.
She was a woman and any exchange of words with a woman was fraught with her torturer’s array of deadly implements, each one hovering at the very edge of a man’s comprehension.
What holds me to life, if not desire? What vaster power exists? With it, I swear, I feel I can defy the inevitable. Weapon and shield, companion and ally, enough to make the world back away, enough to surmount the highest walls and cross the deepest chasms. Desire, you stand in place of a lover’s arms, and make your embrace such dark comfort. She.
Kruppe nodded. “Kruppe is no fool, K’rul. He openly opposes no one, and he finds power a thing to be avoided at all costs.
It was pathetic, the raving accusations of an ego blind to its own lies.
Is your friendship such a burden, then?” “Some burdens are willingly embraced.
When those dreams in that unreachable future suddenly rise up around you, how can you not be blinded to their truths? All at once, it is here. All at once, you are living in its very midst. Why then must you seek to pull away? He.