Biting into her fig, she trailed her fingers along the rough, waxy leaves of an untrimmed hedge and pretended she was in Wallachia. Radu heard it first. “Listen,” he whispered. “Someone is crying.” “And it is not you. What a wonder.
If all the world is hell and evil is all around them, what else can they do but try to help each other?
That compliment is a bit like a rose. It comes with a lot of barbs and thorns.
No one who is strong hits a child.
I am forever loving things that cannot love me back.
What he wouldn’t give to be carved in stone, too. To have his destiny, his path through the Force, already written. Something he could study, reference, cross-check, and follow like his own personal course charted through his own personal stars. Because then he’d know what he was supposed to do and, more important, that he could do it. That he wasn’t disappointing anyone.
I do not want you to forget me. Think of me often. Think of me at the most inappropriate times. But think of me honestly, and remember that I am answering for my own mistakes.
She would mourn Morgana too. A person did not have to be good for there to be loss when they left this world ahead of their time.
For so long he had been afraid of being afraid. Closing himself off to his feelings because of what they might mean, what they might lead to. But closing himself off was doing the opposite of what he hoped. It wasn’t about not feeling fear or ambition or anything else he didn’t think was right for a Jedi. It was about whether or not he gave those feelings power.
But he’d didn’t know what to say. “Thanks for the adventure. Hope your new lives are great. Please miss me, so I feel like I had an impact here.
It was not his mind I loved. It was his esteem for me. He valued me when no one else did. And I thought it made me special, that he loved only me. I should have realized that his inability to love anyone else just meant something was wrong with him.
Despite what others may call them, no one is ever truly lost. There is always hope in the Force.
I felt certain that once again I was on the edge of it. On one side: Victor, Justine, Henry. The life I had built with such vicious determination. On the other: the unknown. But the unknown beckoned, promising rest from pain. Rest from sickness. Rest from the endless striving and manipulating and working, working, working, working just to keep my place in the world.
To the youngest generations we’ve tasked with saving us all: You shouldn’t have to. I’m so sorry.
The sun creeps along, as the sun is wont to do. The occasional insect wanders across Mack’s legs, as insects are wont to do. Mack does nothing, as Mack is wont to do.
It’s not fun anymore, but it’s important now, and he likes that.
But the stars were real, and she would not miss the passing of a single one. “If they were not burning, we would never know they were there.
He doesn’t love you,” she said matter-of-factly. “He didn’t love your mother, either, and I don’t want you to spend your whole life waiting for something he can’t give. Men like that, people are things to them. That’s why he can pick you up and drop you as easily. But you’re not a thing, Brandon. You’re wonderful, and if he can’t see that, he’s broken. Not you. Don’t ever forget that.
She missed death the first time it came for her, and she was ready – maybe even eager – for it here. For that last, final, ultimate hiding place, the darkness in which no one could ever find her. Not her father, not her guilt or her shame, not hunger or fear or want.
And besides,” Obi-Wan said, rushing to change the subject for himself more than anyone, “I would never want to be in a relationship with a leader. Too close to politicians or royalty. I’m sure if I ever fell in love, it would be with someone calm. Peaceful. Easy to get along with.
You never forget the lesson that they would rather destroy you than let you inconvenience them.