Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)

by Ada Palmer

“A sensayer is”—sobs punctuated his answer like hiccups—“somebody who—loves the universe so—so much they—spend their whole life—talking about—all the different—ways that it—could be.”

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“Sensayers help people think about where the world came from, and whether there’s a plan or somebody in charge or just chaos, and what happens when people die.

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I think gendered language was every bit as sensual to our predecessors as it is to us, but they admitted the place of sex in every thought and gesture, while our prudish era, hiding behind the neutered ‘they,’ pretends that we do not assume any two people who lock eyes may have fornicated in their minds if not their flesh.

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I cannot offer wine without the poison of the alcohol within.

I think Cielo de Pájaros is a success because it was the first city designed for those who don’t like city centers, whose perfect evening is spent by a window, watching gulls and black waves crashing down. What need is there for bustle in a city built for bash’es who prefer to be alone?

My kind of city

crisp with that time-consuming perfection only seen in those who perfect their appearances for another’s sake,

the thing that most reliably produces many at once—the effect you’ve worked so hard to replicate—is when people abandon the nuclear family to live in a collective household, four to twenty friends, rearing children and ideas together in a haven of mutual discourse and play. We don’t need to revolutionize the kindergartens, we need to revolutionize the family.”

There is no more shame in reusing such a rich inheritance than in knowing other kings’ hands held this sword before you drew it from the stone.

a person with a strong vocation is not a victim driven helplessly to toil, but a lucky soul whose work is also pleasure,

Your nation is the organization which you chose to protect your family and property, in sickness and in health, as you traveled the globe to find your ideal home.

acknowledge the right of all human beings to choose a different nation if the nations of their birth betray their trust.”

I think there is no person, myself aside, so hated by the ambitious of this world as Bryar Kosala, since those who fight viciously to grasp the reins of power cannot forgive the fact that she could rise so high and still be nice.

The European Union has long recognized that it is absurd to force someone with a father from one country, a mother from another, raised in a third, and working in a fourth to pledge allegiance to one arbitrary geographic nation.

Epicurus thought there was no afterlife, so the most important thing was to be happy in this life. But Epicureans didn’t like quick pleasures like food and alcohol and love affairs, because after you’ve been drunk you feel awful, or when the love affair ends you usually feel awful too. Epicureans focused on kinds of happiness that last a long time, like friendship, a beautiful garden, or thinking about philosophy.”

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“Some books have to be sad to get across the ideas the author wants to talk about. Victor Hugo is describing a very sad part of real history. Hugo wants you to understand that moment in time, what was beautiful about it, and what was horrible. Books, even made-up stories, can’t all have happy endings because they reflect the real world, and the real world isn’t always happy.”

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“If history is written by winners, fiction like that is written by bystanders trying to guess what the victims would have said if they’d survived.”

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It was a magnificent kitchen, six counters each a different temperature, three fridges, four different ovens from the most modern to real brick with firelight within. The kitchen tree which hugged the greenhouse windows was programmed, not for standard snacking fruits and crepe-edged lettuces, but a chef’s array, branches of savory and bay and allspice berries crowded between fiery peppers, currants, young pumpkins, tomatillos, with shallots and radishes bulbous among the tree’s fat roots. Carlyle says every burner was going, pots of steel and clay smelling of garlic, biting oregano, onion, salt, and infinite butter.

Wow

“are you a cook? Or is this just a job?” Such a refreshing question. In our cast of leaders and vocateurs one would almost think we had regressed to the olden days when people were their jobs. Mr. Smith is a banker, Mrs. Christian is a nurse, as if those twenty or forty or sixty hours made the other hundred of each week nothing. How do you introduce yourself at parties, reader? Are you a cook? A hiker? A reader? A moviegoer?

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I know my Stoics, Cynics, their advice, that, when a desire is so intense it hurts you, the healthy path is to detach, unwant it, let it go.

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