More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
She was terrified that the day she stopped amusing him would be the day he remembered he had no use for a daughter.
God had always seemed like his own father—distant, unknowable, disapproving. Radu feared that, as always, nothing he did would ever be good enough to earn the love of an omnipotent and unknowable God.
Religion was a means to an end. She had seen it wielded as a weapon. If she needed to use it, she would, but she would never allow herself to be used by it.
Radu could, though, and he wondered when his sister had decided that nothing less than perfection was acceptable. He stood, wanting to go to her, to hug her, to tell her that it was okay. She still had time to learn, and she was good at so many other things. He wanted her to stop saying those horrible things, to stop thinking them.
He saw now that it was terror, and defiance in the face of her own all-consuming fear.
What if I had no qualms about firing into innocent bystanders?” Lada shrugged. “That would be on your shoulders, not mine. Besides, I know you, Ilyas. You are a man of honor.” He laughed. “And you?” “Not a man.”
I have made mistakes, but I try to use regret as motivation to be more thoughtful, to consider things more carefully, and to be kinder and more generous in all my dealings.”
It sounded like the church of his youth—in love with its own voice, cold and inaccessible.
