City of Miracles (The Divine Cities, #3)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

Change is a slow flower to bloom. Most of us will not see its full radiance. We plant it not for ourselves, but for future generations. But it is worth tending to. Oh, it is so terribly worth tending to.

Shara, he thinks, what were you doing here? It is a fool who lives his life believing the waves upon which he sails shall remember him. The seas know nothing. This makes them beautiful. And this makes them terrible.

We float upon a sea of moments, he thinks. And never are we truly free of them.

definition of an adult is someone who lives their life aware they are sharing the world with others. My definition of an adult is someone who knows the world was here before they showed up and that it’ll be here well after they walk away from it.

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.

“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.”