The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn, #6)

by Brandon Sanderson

Two worlds, he thought immediately, but no home.

“‘Never’ is a word youths often use,” Grandmother said, sipping her tea, “but rarely understand.

if there was one thing you could count on, it was that some of them would be weird. Or rather that all of them would be weird when circumstances happened to align with their own individual brand of insanity.

A walnut bounced off VenDell’s head. He immediately turned to glare at Wayne. “Sorry,” Wayne said. “Just had trouble believing someone could be so melodramatic, so I figured you might not be real. Hadda check, ya know?”

“People,” Wax said, “are like cords, Steris. We snake out, striking this way and that, always looking for something new. That’s human nature, to discover what is hidden. There’s so much we can do, so many places we can go.”

Steris clicked her tongue disapprovingly at Drewton’s words. He hadn’t done his homework, which was a dreadful sin in Steris’s eyes. Little could be worse than entering a situation without being thorough.

I’m off. I’ve learned to fake being normal, but lists of prepared comments and jokes can only take me so far. People can sense that I’m not being authentic—that I don’t like the things they like or think the way they do. Sometimes it amazes me that people like Wayne, or even those kandra, can be so startlingly human when I feel so alien.”

“If I shot you,” Wax said, “nobody would blame me. They’d probably just say, ‘Wow. You lasted that long? I’d have shot him years ago.’

“Statistics show that if we make subtle changes to our environment—the way we approach our legal system, or employment rates, maybe even our city layout—we can positively influence the people living in that environment.

I’m wondering if every person I pass has similar depths, and if there’s any way to avoid the mistake of judging them so shallowly that I’m rocked when they show their true complexity.

“I remember being a child, and assuming the world belonged to me. That I’d be able to seize it when I grew older, accomplish my dreams, become something great. Yet as I’ve aged, I feel like less and less is under my control. I can’t help thinking it shouldn’t be that way. How could I have been so in control as a youth, yet often feel so helpless as an adult?”

Don’t you ever feel like you never actually grew up? That everyone else did, but you’re secretly faking?”