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spraying spit as they argued viciously over the exact meaning of the Saviour’s exhortation to civility.
Theology had never really been his strong suit, but he was reasonably sure the Saviour had talked a lot about mercy.
Start the evening looking for fun, end the morning begging forgiveness.
You have to treat people like oranges, Gal the Purse always said. Squeeze what you can from the bastards, then waste no regrets when you toss away their wrung-out skins. You have to treat people like stepping stones. Like rungs on your ladder. Or you’ll wake up one day with nothing but a set of bootprints on your own back.
You can stack your doubts high before. You can polish your regrets up after. But while the fight’s on, your purpose must be pure. Kill the enemy. Don’t die yourself.
He flopped sideways, mute testament to the greatest fighting technique of all: a friend behind your enemy.
People’s heads might all be different but their insides are much alike.
If he’d learned one thing during his many years on earth, it was that words are rarely better than silence.
“Everything ends in tears,”
He believed in God, of course, but, as a magician, they had never particularly got on. He believed in goats but desired no interaction with them.
Lying was a sin, apparently, unless you did it outrageously and persistently enough, in which case it qualified as scripture.
The little girl pulled a knife from her apron and set to scoring grooves in the dough. Sunny once heard it said that loaves are all about the grooves. They won’t rise properly without them. Maybe people are the same. They’ll never come out well unless they’re cut a bit.
“A sad indictment of the world we live in that we run out of jokes before we run out of enemies.”
One of those things you’ve heard of, sounded vaguely interesting, but you’d never, ever want to actually visit. Like England.
“You need to stop clinging to the notion that there’s only one right path. You’ll waste half your time panicking you’re not on it, and the rest backtracking to find it.
In the end, time gives everyone the kick in the sack they deserve.
“Happy endings are just stories that aren’t finished yet.”
“There’s more to everyone than meets the eye,”
“You get to my age, you realise nothing lasts for ever. No love, no hate, no war, no peace. If a thing hasn’t ended … you haven’t waited long enough.”
You had something. Be thankful for that.” Jakob gave a long, pained sigh. “Now you have to let it go.”
“What’s hard to make,” she muttered to herself, “is hard to break.”
People rarely want all of the truth
