City of Miracles (The Divine Cities, #3)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

What a tremendous sin impatience is, he thinks. It blinds us to the moment before us, and it is only when that moment has passed that we look back and see it was full of treasures.

‘To live with hatred,’ says Sigrud, ‘is like grabbing hot embers to throw them at someone you think an enemy. Who gets burned the worst?’

‘A better world comes not in a flood,’ sighs Ivanya, ‘but with a steady drip, drip, drip. Yet it feels at times that every drop is bought with sorrow and grief. It ruins us.’

‘We don’t get to choose many things. What happens to us, if we live or die, or who we love. But we can at least choose to admit, sometimes, that things are good. And sometimes, that is enough.’

‘If one were to protest all the injustices of life,’ says Sigrud, ‘great and small, one would have no time for living.’