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November 25, 2021 - February 19, 2022
Kote nodded. “I won’t blame you if you want to leave, Bast. You have better places to be than this.” Bast’s expression was shocked. “I couldn’t leave, Reshi.” He opened and closed his mouth a few times, at a loss for words. “Who else would teach me?”
But once it rested in his hand, he was forced to fight an angel to keep it.
“Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.”
I’ll turn you into a poet with the soul of a priest.
“The difference is between saying something to a person, and saying something about a person.The first might be rude, but the second is always gossip.”
The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
The cleverness in the music was his. The best words were hers.
My parents danced together, her head on his chest. Both had their eyes closed. They seemed so perfectly content. If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you’re lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day. The image of them gently swaying to the music is how I picture love in my mind even after all these years.
but I do remember trying to sleep and feeling quite alone except for a dull, bittersweet ache.
I hope they spent those last few hours well. I hope they didn’t waste them on mindless tasks: kindling the evening fire and cutting vegetables for dinner. I hope they sang together, as they so often did. I hope they retired to our wagon and spent time in each other’s arms. I hope they lay near each other afterward and spoke softly of small things. I hope they were together, busy with loving each other, until the end came.
As he continued to load the barrow, he moved slower and slower, like a machine winding down. Eventually he stopped completely and stood for a long minute, still as stone. Only then did his composure break. And even with no one there to see, he hid his face in his hands and wept quietly, his body wracked with wave on wave of heavy, silent sobs.
PERHAPS THE GREATEST FACULTY our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need. First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind’s way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door. Second is the door
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“May all your stories be glad ones, and your roads be smooth and short.”
Many of the men and women had demons hiding inside them that fled screaming when the hammer touched them. These people Tehlu spoke with a while longer, but he always embraced them in the end,
All around men turned their heads, because the bloody field was less horrible to look upon than Lyra’s grief.
You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.”
Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear.
Why? Because pride is a strange thing, and because generosity deserves generosity in return. But mostly because it felt like the right thing to do, and that is reason enough.
“Rieusa, tu kialus A’isha tua.”Thank you for bringing me close to your family.
I wanted to take her hand. I wanted to brush her cheek with my fingertips. I wanted to tell her that she was the first beautiful thing I had seen in three years. That the sight of her yawning to the back of her hand was enough to drive the breath from me. How I sometimes lost the sense of her words in the sweet fluting of her voice. I wanted to say that if she were with me then somehow nothing could ever be wrong for me again.
The closeness of her was the sweetest, sharpest thing my life had ever known.
Look behind him instead, to the circle of light that the fire has made, and leave Kvothe to himself for now. Everyone deserves a moment or two alone when they desire it. And if by chance there were tears, let us forgive him. He was just a child, after all, and had yet to learn what sorrow really was.
Besides, anger can keep you warm at night, and wounded pride can spur a man to wondrous things.
“First is the Doctrine of Correspondence which says, ‘similarity enhances sympathy.’ Second is the Principle of Consanguinity, which says, ‘a piece of a thing can represent the whole of a thing.’ Third is the Law of Conservation, which says ‘energy cannot be destroyed nor created.’ Correspondence, Consanguinity, and Conservation. The three C’s.”
Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer.
I buried my face in my hands and wept. Not for a broken lute string and the chance of failure. Not for blood shed and a wounded hand. I did not even cry for the boy who had learned to play a lute with six strings in the forest years ago. I cried for Sir Savien and Aloine, for love lost and found and lost again, at cruel fate and man’s folly. And so, for a while, I was lost in grief and knew nothing.
Metal rusts, I thought, music lasts forever.
She followed his gesture, met my eyes, and lit up as she smiled at me. I returned the smile by reflex alone. My heart began to beat again.
not flawless, perhaps, but perfect.
sat there in the dark, holding her sleeping body in my arms. She was soft and warm, indescribably precious. I had never held a woman before. After a few
moments my back began to ache with the pressure of supporting her weight and my own. My leg started to go numb. Her hair tickled my nose. Still, I didn’t move for fear of ruining this, the most wonderful moment of my life.
“I’ve got you,” she said dreamily. I could hear the warm, sleepy smile in her voice, like a child tucked into bed. “Will you be my dark-eyed Prince Gallant and protect me from pigs? Sing to me? Whisk me away to tall trees. . . .” she trailed off to nothing. “I will,” I said, but I could tell by the heavy weight of her against my arm that she had finally fallen asleep.
“Denna is a wild thing,” I explained. “Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don’t say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its nature and something unfortunately was hurt. The same is true of Denna.”
“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
