City of Miracles (The Divine Cities, #3)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

Last he heard, Mulaghesh was still serving in Parliament in Ghaladesh, and was enjoying a surprising burst of popularity—he knows her supporters fondly call her “Mother Mulaghesh,” which amuses him, as Mulaghesh was about as motherly as a dreadnought.

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.

There is too much night, and not enough moon, if that makes any sense.

My 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. My definition of an adult, in other words, is someone who lives their life with a little fucking perspective.

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.

We are all of us but the sum of our moments, our deeds.

“You, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson,” says Olvos, tapping out her pipe, “are a man that a miracle mistook for a god.”