The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)

by Ken Liu

Creation seems to favor making friends of those destined to be enemies.”

Sometimes, the anger built up so much that people had to scream out their treasonous thoughts just to keep on breathing.

If you try to obey the law, and the judges call you a criminal anyway, then you might as well live up to the name.”

Oh, how straight were their backs as they looked at their executioners with equanimity!”

So much received wisdom was not wisdom at all, just like so much of what men imagined as signs from the gods were only wishes in their heads. It was best to attend to the world of what was, rather than what he had been told.

He had taken something of great value hidden in his heart and willingly handed it to her. And she had torn it to pieces and scattered it to the winds so that it was gone forever. Yet he did not want to have it back. He wanted only to be able to give it to her again.

sometimes it can be both too late to curse the gods and too early to thank men.”

“Friendships among men tend to not survive great rises or falls of fortune,”

No matter how large a man grew in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of his wife he would always be life-size, or maybe even smaller-than-life.

“You’ve both grown more used to the image of each other than the reality,” said Soto. “That’s the danger with ideals. We’re never as perfect as how others wish us to be.”

“I feed you so that you don’t have to steal. A man who steals is a man who has lost all hope, and you’re too young to have no hope.”

An army does not need only to fight; there’s also what happens before and what happens after.”