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.

It is a little too civilized for Sigrud, who was raised in a culture where the person who yelled the loudest was usually considered to be in the right.

Sigrud was actually very much aware of how to slit a throat by 1710, but refrains from correcting her.

she just wishes he paid her in ways that were easier to hand in at the bank.

“One should not seek ugliness in this world. There is no lack of it. You will find it soon enough, or it will find you.”

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

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.

“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.”

“How much credit is owed to someone who says, ‘Do this,’ and does very little themselves is debatable,”

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