The Warm Hands of Ghosts

by Katherine Arden

Aren’t you glad you were right? You couldn’t change anything, you couldn’t stop anything. But at least you knew it was coming. The end of the world. Was that comforting, in the end?

In a way, it’s easier to imagine the world’s going to end. At least there’s a certainty to it. End—bam—done. But change—where does change stop?”

What’s progress? Give people God’s power—to build ships like islands, or fly like birds, or set fire to the bowels of earth like the devil in his damned pit—it just writes their stupidity larger and larger until they drown the whole world. Our hands get bigger and our spirits shrink. Is it any wonder, really, that God’s done with us?

“You are still proud of him, I hope.” “Yes,” said Pim. “Always. But does it matter?”

What a line about the casualties of war

“It’s the pattern of the times. Were you expecting honest justice? There’s none. It’s a new world now. It eats you up, sinners and saints, all alike.”

Laura had fought her monster, and Pim had found herself one. It was so much easier to hate a man than a system: vast, inhuman, bloodstained.