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only those with their feet on rock can build castles in the air.
Those who are inclined to casual cruelty say that inside a fat girl is a thin girl and a lot of chocolate.
They thought you could see life through books but you couldn’t, the reason being that the words got in the way.
The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.
Supposing there was justice for all, after all? For every unheeded beggar, every harsh word, every neglected duty, every slight … every choice … Because that was the point, wasn’t it? You had to choose. You might be right, you might be wrong, but you had to choose, knowing that the rightness or wrongness might never be clear or even that you were deciding between two sorts of wrong, that there was no right anywhere. And always, always, you did it by yourself.
The reward for toil had been more toil. If you dug the best ditches they gave you a bigger shovel.
And the trouble with not asking for anything in return was that sometimes you didn’t get it.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple-corer.
books that were all about the world tended to be written by people who knew all about books rather than all about the world.
She was not, herself, hugely in favour of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn’t exactly difficult. Even cats managed it. But women acted as if they’d been given a medal that entitled them to boss people around. It was as if, just because they’d got the label which said ‘mother’, everyone else got a tiny part of the label that said ‘child’ …
And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’
When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.’
You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people any more, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just … is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbours.
