Some things went beyond a single man’s life, and maybe justice existed outside the minds of humanity, beyond even the hungry eyes of gods and goddesses, a thing shining and pure and final.
Purest light will blind as surely as absolute darkness.
A soul carries a vessel of courage. It cannot be refilled. Every thing that takes from it leaves less behind.
Kadaspala worshipped colour. It was the gift of light; and in its tones, heavy and light, faint and rich, was painted all of life.
The nature of conspiracy, which among those who both feared and named it, seemed to always possess at its core a misguided belief in the competence of others, as weighed against the incapacities, real or imagined, of the believer. Therefore, he concluded, the belief in conspiracy was an announcement of the believer’s own sense of utter helplessness in the face of forces both mysterious and fatally efficient.
I would hold, my friend, that what you describe is but one side of the matter, and indeed one that looks only inward, as if the borders of your life enclose everything to be valued, while what lies beyond is of no worth whatsoever.
And at that instant, Ivis, so brightly painted in triumph, does the world freeze? Does time itself cease, nothing crawling on; not a single moment following in its usual tumble? But what world offers this impossibility? Only the one begat in a mind, and then raised in chains, never to be set free. The fashioning of nostalgia, my friend, imprisons us.
Extraordinary, how single lives just fold into the whole mess, over and over again, all caught up in the greater swirl. Spinning round and round, and ever downward, it seems. Ever downward. Fools, all of us, to think we can swim clear of that current.
The world was full of lies. And people keep telling us we need them, all in the name of peace. But the peace we got was poison.
His agonized scream rode the cascading waves of power as they swept across the terrace.
The power he commanded insisted upon subjects. Strength was ever relative, and he could not dominate without the company of the dominated.
Life was a war against a thousand enemies, from the sustenance carved from nature to the insanity of a people’s will to do wrong in the name of right.
A chill crept over Duiker. Even wheeled hospitals carried with them that pervasive atmosphere of fear, the sounds of defiance and the silence of surrender. Mortality’s many comforting layers had been stripped away, revealing wracked bones, a sudden comprehension of death that throbbed like an exposed nerve.
Trull Sengar kills, and kills, and then, when it is done and he kneels in the blood of the kin he has slain, he weeps.
The world vanished inside a shrieking, whirling ochre haze. Stones and gravel pelted them, drawing flinches from the stallion and grunts of pain from Kalam.
Kneels? Falters? Look to the night sky, foolish man, and gauge the victor in the contest between Dark and Light.
Never make a roadblock of yourself on trouble’s road. No, make yourself a bridge instead, with stones slick as grease.
You are young,’ said Rise. ‘There is much for you to bear, but the gift of youth means you scarcely feel its weight. It distresses me to think that you are growing old before your time.
Against ignorance there is no front line. Against viciousness no border can hold. It breeds as readily behind your back as elsewhere.
When one can possess loyalty even in the straits of full, brutal understanding, then that one understands all there is to understand about compassion.