More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Truth tellers were never welcome; most especially one’s own. Better to be a storyteller – they at least have grasped the essential truth that everyone prefers lies.
‘See how you should always keep your mouth shut? People only want to hear what they want to hear.’
‘I’ve seen religion from the top and from the bottom, Ella. I’ve been intimate with faith all my life. And it occurs to me that the transfixion of ecstasy, the transporting feeling of being one with a god, is the same everywhere. It matters not what image or idol is bowed to or hangs on the wall, be it the cowled figure of Hood, or a severed bull’s head. It’s all the same because the sensation, the feeling, is the same as it comes from within all of us. From inside. Not without.’ He looked up, his gaze narrowed. ‘That’s the important point. It is a natural innate emotion, a human quality, that
...more
True pure evil, Assessor, is waste. It is the blunting of potential, the cutting off of a person’s or a people’s promise, or options, for development. It is, emblematically, the death of a child.’
We invent patterns when we look back on what has brought us to wherever we happen to be. This particular choice, or that particular turn. All in hindsight … when in truth all was mere chance.
The success and advance of incompetents is a universal mystery, yes? Some would say it is because those above prefer subordinates who do not threaten them.
History consists of nothing more than the lies we tell ourselves to justify the present.
Yes, we’re all older now. And perhaps the past glows brighter as it recedes ever further.
So, not so much faith as a bowing in submission to a greater power. Yet is there any distinction? Is not worship no more than a prettified effort at cringing ingratiation?
‘I’ve come to understand that the truth isn’t really what’s important.’ He cocked his head, his cold blue gaze edging back to her. ‘What really matters is what people come to agree is the truth.’
Because it is one thing to catch what you’ve always sought. After that it is quite another matter. The question really should be: what do you do with it once you’ve caught it?’
The true value, the deeper measure, is attention. Attention and relevance. That is what really matters in the end. The lack of gold, the condition of poverty, that can be remedied. But the lack of attention? Irrelevance? These are much harder to overcome. They are in fact terminal.’
‘Those who do not gamble do so betting that terrible things will eventually happen to those who do.’
Only in the doing can the measure be made, and then only in hindsight.
‘We do not follow the philosophy of purity versus pollution. That is a false choice, a false dichotomy. The truth is, nothing is “pure”. Everything is the product of something else. To name something “pure” is to pretend it has no history, nothing before it, which is obviously false.’
When you do not recognize the wrongs of the past, the future takes its revenge.
‘No. It has fallen to you – not because you are somehow special or singled out by fate. It is just that your turn has come. As it came to me.’ He straightened, studied his muddy hands. That I can understand, I suppose. None of this stupid special chosen nonsense.
