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I finally remembered what my father told me about the Quillonians. It just popped into my head. Shakespeare said, All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances. So, Dina, let them have their monologue.
My future chef was an oversized, hysterical hedgehog with a martyr complex.
Would you rather be a hero in charge of your own destiny or a martyr wallowing in self-pity? What will it be?”
“You are not meant to be at peace. We, the human beings, are meant to live life to its fullest. We are meant to experience it all—sadness, disappointment, rage, kindness, joy, love. We are meant to test ourselves. It is painful and frightening, but this is what it means to be alive. You are hiding from life here. This isn’t peace. This is a slow, deliberate suicide.”
We make our own choices in life. Our actions shape our lives, and we alone are responsible for them.”
Life is trade; we trade our labor for its fruit, we trade hours of study for knowledge, we trade pleasure for pleasure or sometimes for wealth, security, or offspring.
“There comes a point where you have to stop trying to repair yourself and accept the fact that you’re broken.
Of all the types of beings one finds oneself dealing with, the true believers are the worst. A typical sentient’s psyche is a spiderweb. Pull on the right thread and you will get the desired result. Praise them and they will like you. Ridicule them and they’ll hate you. Greedy can be bought, timid can be frightened, smart can be persuaded, but the zealots are immune to money, fear, or reason. A zealot’s psyche is a tightrope. They have severed everything else in favor of their goal. They will pay any price for their victory, and that makes them infinitely more dangerous.”
Breath caught in my chest. I realized with absolute clarity that one day I was going to die. One day I would no longer be here. All the things I wanted, all my thoughts, all my worries—all of it would be gone with me, lost forever. There were so many things I wanted to do. So much I still wanted to see. I had to hold on to it. I had to hold on to every short second of life. Every breath was a gift, gone forever to the cold stars the moment I exhaled.
“Desperation is a catalyst that forces us to act,” Odalon said. “It summons the last reserves we possess in an effort to extricate us from danger.
He said he’d met a girl with stardust on her robe, and when he looked into her eyes, he saw the universe looking back.”
There were few universal principles in this world. That most water-based lifeforms drank tea was one. That we fear what we cannot see was the other.
