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most creatures are pleased to do what their nature dictates.
It seemed that there were still things one could not do. So one did everything else as well as one possibly could and found new things to try, to will oneself to master, and always one realized, at the kernel and heart of things, that the ends of the earth would not be far enough away.
“It is power that teaches patience; holding power, I mean. And you learn the price it exacts—which is something I never knew when I was your age and thought a sword and quick wits could deal with anything. I never knew the price you pay for power.”
“I don’t much enjoy feeling like excess baggage.
The axis of her life was swinging and she knew not how or where, only that somehow, she had lived in order to come to this shore.
courage was not lacking in her heart, though it might be foolhardy and unwise.
We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.
courage casts its own light.
There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.
Deny not your own mortality.
You failed because humans fail. It is a gift as much as anything else.
There will come a tomorrow when you weep for me.
When you didn’t say a lot, he thought, you said the important things.
