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In regione caecorum rex est luscus. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. —ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM
It’s war, T. The innocent die. And the best their friends can do is get vengeance. Later.
Like every good gift, beauty was a blessing for the rich, but sometimes a curse for the poor.
“My name is Marissia Pullawr. The White was my grandmother. You were my assignment. I was never a slave.”
Combat was scary: you could do everything right and still get killed by a stray bullet or an ally’s error or dumb luck.
Sleep deprivation led inexorably to bad decisions.
“A crisis is simply opportunity wearing danger’s cloak. On the other hand, you know what they say about old warriors and bold warriors.”
These weren’t madmen. They were something more dangerous. These were zealots. More dangerous than merely bad men because they would never rest, but also more foolish. Zealots always wanted to explain, to gain converts.
When life is outrageous, the only appropriate response is an inappropriate one.
They’d seemed to be such good people, but then, the real monsters had an uncanny ability to hide right in plain sight, didn’t they?
Time is the only prison from which prison frees us.
“Language isn’t weird. People are weird. Language makes sense until people get their phoneme pukers on it.”
With soldiers, if you spoke bureaucratese, they’d assume you’d been assigned to do it. All the bullshit orders come dressed in jargon. If you just said what you wanted, they knew it was your own idea.
“Look at your mistakes long enough to learn from them, then put them behind you.”
“Any idea that starts with the words ‘one last time’ is a bad idea,”
Death always finds a way. Stop what gaps you may; Scream defiance that you live, Life leaks through the mortal sieve.
“Well, it sounds great,” Conn Arthur said. “Of course, plans usually do.”
But what is this distant war to us? We will pay in coin, lest we have to pay in blood. For those with money, that sounds like an acceptable trade.
“Yes, sir!” she said. “And sorry for being a jackass, everyone.” “Common malady ’round here,” Big Leo muttered.
The element of surprise is no advantage if you’re surprised, too.
The body can die but once, pride can die every day.
mercy ceases to be a virtue when it enables further injustice.
There was a scholar—more of a dramatist, really—who said, ‘Hell is other people.’ He was right, and he was a fool. Heaven is other people, too.”
“Seasons come and seasons go, but youth will always think they know more than their elders.”
‘It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it’?
“Because …” the dead man said, as if leading a very stupid pupil to an obvious truth, “because black is the color of …” “Of madness,” Gavin said hollowly. “Dazen, Gavin has been dead seventeen years. He was never imprisoned. You killed him at Sundered Rock.”
You knew that you were shameful, that you were a murderer, and everything you did to atone for your sins was a pile of glass baubles next to the mountain of shit that you built higher every year to keep yourself in power, to stay alive. You thought you were so clever. You thought yourself nigh unto a god, when in reality you were propped up by those who feared and hated you as much as by those who loved you. And even that wan love was tainted with fear and despair.”
A soldier without confidence and honor is a breath away from becoming a brigand or gangster.
‘Don’t decide to change. The world is full of people who have decided to change but haven’t. Don’t decide to change—change. If you want to be different, act different.’
“Life is lived in the pauses between wars. Any peace is better than any war, some say.”
It’s easier to build a new culture on the graves of the dead than around the homes of the living.
“Evil is what we call what we don’t understand.”
“The most important part of seeking victory is defining it first,”
“When you have to go through hell, go quickly.”
“Surely a man who gives his life trying to save his friends is just as much a hero as one who dies actually saving them, right?”
There were many kinds of suicidal madness. There was only one name for the kind of madness that puts a gun to its own head when it has no intention of pulling the trigger: youth.
glory is to young idiots as a mountain of poppy is to the lotus eater.
“Maybe the Chromeria deserves to fall,” Gavin said. “Oh, most certainly. Our regime is the absolute worst way to rule, except for all the others that have been tried. The Chromeria is an idea, son, and if it’s exposed as a hollow one, civilization falls.
A man who has strength but no love is worse than dead.
I’ve buried my brother and will bury Lorcan. There is nothing unique in my suffering. A thousand within shouting distance have suffered worse. The world is hard.”
men never believe others are more good than they are. Bad men see mercy as weakness. Smart men see it as shrewdness. Saintly men might see the truth of it, but sadly there are few saints among those we’re trying to convince to join us.”
“Are you insane?” “Idealistic. It’s a near cousin.”
Some secrets sink their claws so deep that the shock of their revelation tears those claws out of flesh and leaves scars forever.
