In the cruel game of politics, we are brought low by the child within each of us, until every howl is deafening in its abject stupidity, and none can hear the wails of the suffering.
When the time for action comes, all doubts must be discarded.
How the time for dreams of the future seemed to slip past unnoticed, until in reviving them a man realized, with a shock, that the privilege was no longer his to entertain, that it belonged to those younger faces he saw on all sides, laughing in the tavern and on the streets, running wild.
The sky cares nothing for you, dear one. The stars don’t even see you.
Pain worn without pause and for so long could itself become a mask.
I conclude that your particular species, Captain, advances by way of deadly incompetence, willful ignorance, deliberate misunderstanding, and venal acquisitiveness, combined with serendipitous technological superiority.
No one wanted to listen. Independent thought had been relinquished, with appalling eagerness, it seemed to him, and in its place had risen a stolid resolve to question nothing. Worse, Trull found he could not help himself. Even as he saw the anger grow in the faces of those around him – anger that he dare challenge, that he dare think in ways contrary to theirs, and so threaten their certainty – he was unable to stay silent.
The Warrens of Magic dwelt in the beyond. Find the gate and nudge it open a crack. What leaks out is yours to shape. With these words a young woman set out on the path to sorcery. Open yourself to the Warren that comes to you – that finds you. Draw forth its power – as much as your body and soul are capable of containing – but remember, when the body fails, the gate closes.
It’s rare you’ll find a mage with a pleasant past.
When memories have returned, Trull Sengar, solitude is an illusion, for every silence is filled by a clamorous search for meaning.
They’ll die for you now. I know, you don’t do it on purpose. There’s nothing calculated when you’re being human, old friend. That’s what makes you so deadly.
Well, that’s how the past is for most of us, Tammy. A jumbled collection of sordid stupidities, hopeless longings and hapless regrets.
Their reappearance on the plain was enough to announce their success and the Wickans raised a wail that ran through each clan’s encampment, the sound as much sorrowful as triumphant, a fitting dirge to announce the fall of a god.
Omens are for fools, but every truth of the future resides in the present, if only we have the will to see.
Should you ever outrun the guilt within your past, Sorceress, you will have outrun your soul. When it finds you again, it will kill you.
The curse of great minds. Arriving young to an idea, surviving the siege that invariably assails it, then, finally, standing guard on the ramparts long after the war’s over, weapons dull in leaden hands.
People will grieve. For the dead, for the living For the loss of innocence and for the surrender of innocence, which are two entirely different things. We will grieve, for choices made and not made, for the mistakes of the heart which can never be undone, for the severed nerve-endings of old scars and those to come.
Dreams can be naught but an imagination’s fashioning of its own fears.
I am no critic. Merely a humble observer who, when able, speaks on behalf of the tongue-tied multitudes otherwise known as the commonalty, or, more precisely, the rabble. An audience, understand, wholly incapable of self-realization or cogent articulation, and thus possessors of depressingly vulgar tastes when not apprised of what they truly like, if only they knew it. My meagre gift, therefore, lies in the communication of an aesthetic framework upon which most artists hang themselves.
Is love so paltry a thing, to be plucked and dropped to the ground at the first breath of contempt?