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His ego was so powerful it shone from him like a strange light, distorting the personalities of everyone around him at least halfway into being bastards themselves. Superiors became snivelling accomplices. Experts deferred to his ignorance. Decent men were reduced to sycophantic shits. Ladies of judgement to giggling cyphers.
badly carved like dragons’ heads, or wolves’ heads, or something that was meant to make men scared but only made Craw nostalgic for decent carpentry.
He wondered if they were bubbling up with worry on the inside, just like he was, and putting a stern face on the wreckage, just like he was. Or if it was only him scared. But in the end it didn’t make much difference. The best you could do with fear was act like you had none.
When there is no law, there is no crime.
Like a camel turd baked in the sun, beneath the pious crust he was the same stinking, self-serving coward he had always been.
‘The greater a man’s power swells, the smaller his good qualities shrivel.’
A problem left behind was just the same as a problem solved. Wasn’t it?
Just life, ain’t it? You make the best of what you’re offered.
If you want to be a fine new person with a fine new life you’ve got to put the person you were behind you, like a snake sheds its skin. You’ve got to stop picking through your hoard of hurts and grievances like a miser through his coins, set ’em down and allow yourself to go free. You’ve got to forgive and you’ve got to trust, not because anyone else deserves it, but because you do.
But once you start garrotting people you can’t claim to stand with the righteous.
One by one, things he had never imagined, then told himself he would never do, then that he would never do again, had become his daily routine.
It’s a hard rain don’t wash someone a favour,
‘Rules must be for all, and for those who lead most of all. Without rules, every man stands alone, owning only what he can tear from the world with one hand and grip with the other. Chaos.’
