For the first time I understood something my grandmother told me years before, that it’s not our deeds that hurt us, but what they make us believe about ourselves.
Discipline is simply self-control. If a warrior can’t control her feelings, she can’t control her actions, and if she can’t control her actions, she may blunder into a serious mistake.
I knew what she was doing. Each touch was a question. She was asking me what I would give and what I would withhold, what I would reveal, what I would hide. I had told her that I loved her. Perhaps she was unsure of what I meant, and now she was asking me the questions she couldn’t frame in words. How much of myself would I give her? How much was hers?
If my love for Maara depended on her love for me, it was not love, but a bargain.
A woman with a warrior’s heart shouldn’t fear the truth,” she said. “No weapon in the world is stronger than the truth.
So it is the custom that a free woman leave her mother’s house to bind herself and those of her blood to a neighboring clan, either by the sword or by the cradle.
It seemed to me a wicked tale, to blame a woman for men’s folly.
You have the right to refuse to do anything that anyone asks of you, but that doesn’t mean that to refuse is always wise.” “But I have the right to be unwise, isn’t that true?” “Yes,” she said. “You’re a free woman. We are all free women here. Freedom is important, just as obedience is important. Each has its place.
I wondered how it was possible to be so happy and so miserable all at once.
This was how she saw the world. It could take from her in a moment everything she loved. It could deny her anything she wanted. The world had granted me almost my every wish, and none more precious to me than this one. The world had granted her only this.
Aamah would sometimes remind them that the story of an old disputte should be retold only when no aftertaste of bitterness remains upon the tongue.
A woman counsels caution, while a man’s heart burns to see justice done.
It took me a long time to learn that I didn’t have to feel what someone wanted me to feel, but once I learned it, it became a habit. It’s a useful habit. Because I wasn’t angry, I was able to think clearly about what was the best thing to do.
Why can’t you sleep?” Sparrow whispered. “You must be exhausted.” “The world changes too much,” I whispered back. “I’m trying to keep up.” Sparrow brushed my cheek with her fingertips. “You can catch up tomorrow,” she said. “Close your eyes.
I was certain we would have found one another though worlds had separated us.
I would follow her. I would search the world for her, and if she were to leave this world for another, I would follow her there too. I would love my life for as long as Maara lived. More than that no one could demand of me, not even my own gods.
Let us take care not to yield to evil’s power, because evil has no power but what we give it.
The more I thought about it, the more I believed that it was impossible not to hope, and few things could be more painful than to hope for love only to be constantly disappointed.
Your feelings tell you many things about the world,” she said, “but people seldom listen to what their feelings tell them. It’s much more satisfying to indulge one’s feelings than to learn from them.
Beloved,” I said, “my heart is full to bursting with things it doesn’t understand. If they stay there, locked away, they’ll die there, or they’ll break my heart to pieces trying to get out. All I want is for you to want those things. Touch the door. One touch from you and it will spring open.