Kindle Notes & Highlights
Suffering is the fuel in the engine of civilization.
That gleam of faith’s power in his eye was the reflection of an inner conviction the like of which Nom Anor could only imagine: to know, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the True Gods stood at his shoulder, guiding his hand in Their service. To know that all truth, all justice, all right, shone from the True Gods like stellar wind, illuminating the universe. The warmaster was a true believer.
“For a time? How is this possible? Why would her successor let her live?” “Does the warmaster truly wish a disquisition upon the New Republic’s perverse system of government? It has to do with a bizarre concept called democracy, in which ruling power is given to whoever is most skillful at directing the herd instincts of the largest masses of their most ignorant citizens—”
There’s the trouble with fanatics, he thought. They’re easy to manipulate, but somehow they take everything five steps too far.
If the Force is life, how can there be life without the Force?
Nothing could remake him into the Jacen Solo he remembered:
“No. What you feel is the Force.” Slowly, painfully, she lifted herself onto her elbows, and she met his blankly astonished stare. “This is the shameful secret of the Jedi: There is no dark side.”
“The Force is one, Jacen Solo. The Force is everything, and everything is the Force. I’ve told you already: the Force does not take sides. The Force does not even have sides.”
“No. Search your feelings. You know this to be true. The Force is one.”
Greatness—true greatness of any kind—requires the surrender of control. Passion that is guided, not walled away. Leave your limits behind.” “But—but the dark side—” She rose, her smoldering garments wreathing her in coils of smoke. “If your surrender leads to slaughter, that is not because the Force has darkness in it. It is because you do.”
the force is one, jacen. it encompasses all opposites. truth and lies, life and death, new republic and yuuzhan vong. light and dark and good and evil. they’re all each other, because each thing and everything is the same thing. the force is one.
“There are thousands of warriors out here,” Nom Anor repeated, waving a futile fist. “You are only one man!” “I am only one Jedi.” “You’re insane!” The man’s answering laugh was deep and long and bright, full of joy and freedom. “No. I am Ganner.”
God the Ganner sequence was so fucking epic
“This threshold,” he announced through a happy grin, “is mine. I claim it for my own. Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don’t give a damn.” His flourish ended with the blade slanted before his chest, and his teeth flashed in the gloom. “None shall pass.”
They are half truths. Less. They are lies. The truth is always greater than the words we use to describe it.
These are mere flicks of melody in Ganner’s symphony of the Force. The Force does more than give him strength, more than lift him, spin him: the Force surges though his veins to tune his heart to the rhythm of the Universe. He has become the Force, and the Force has become him.
To hold the archway it is not enough to merely wound and kill, is not enough to be calm, and surgical, and grieving. To hold the archway, he must not only slaughter, but slaughter effortlessly, carelessly, laughingly. Joyfully.
The Force thunders through him, and he thunders through the Force. Letting slip the bonds of control, leaving aside conscious thought, answering only the surge of his passion and his joy, he finds power undreamed of. He has become the battle.
