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The stars are pretty but the space between them is infinite and black with promise.’
Fear is a valuable commodity, it’s commonsense compressed into its purest form.
A lie can run deeper than strength or wisdom.
Time was when you put a crack in the world it would heal quickly, like a scratch on skin. Now such wounds fester. Any crack is apt to grow. To spread. The world has become thin. Pressed on too many sides. The wise can feel it. The wise fear it.
‘Given time enough, and peace, the wound you bear will heal. Time still heals all wounds, for now. And the scars left behind are our legacy of remembrance. But pick at it and it will fester and consume you.
What saves us all are the deeds of fools as often as the acts of the wise.
A man casts a million shadows, and yet you trap him within such a singular opinion.
‘Truth is rarely what people want,
‘It doesn’t matter if you win – it only matters that you make a stand,’
Lies smell sweet – the truth often stinks.
Great emotion, it turns out, is a fire, and like a fire it needs fuel. Unfed it dies down to a hot and banked glow, ready to ignite again but leaving space for other matters.
Throw away too much of your past and you abandon the person who walked those days. When you pare away at yourself you can reinvent, that’s true enough, but such whittling always seems to reveal a lesser man, and promises to leave you with nothing at the end.
Patience is the key. In the end your enemies always come to you.’
If there’s one thing I know about people, from fool to sage, it’s that they have a hard time not showing that they know more than you do – and of course by doing so they close that gap a little.
The road forgets. Make your life a journey, keep moving toward what you want, leave behind anything that’s too heavy to carry.
The death of a small hope hurts more than an age of despair.
Still, children hope in ways adults find hard to imagine. They carry their dreams before them, fragile, in both arms, waiting for the world to trip them.
The Norse called it Loki’s key, in Christendom they’d name it the Devil’s key, neither title offered anything but tricks, lies, and damnation. The Liar’s key.
To some men the desire for revenge can be a craving that will lead them on through one danger into another – it can consume them, a burning light outshining all others making them blind to danger, deaf to caution. Some call those men brave. I call them fools.
