Scourged (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #10)

by Kevin Hearne

“Look! I make no plans for the future but to go back to my forest home again.”

Pick a system—any system, legal or ecclesiastical—and you’ll start to wonder at how anyone could think it was fair. And then you’ll realize it was never meant to be fair but rather was intended to protect the interests of the powerful, and then you’re wading through a swamp of cynicism and your day’s ruined.

I think my instinctive rejection of judgment comes from meeting too many people who say on the one hand that their chosen deity shall judge us all but then they judge me anyway, rather than leaving it up to the deity they profess to believe in and trust. That’s using religion to cudgel people into conformity, and it grinds my gears.

A Buddhist wishes to point out that desires are what prevent people from achieving happiness, that materialism is the cause of discord.

Dogs, I think, might be more important than principles. They provide love and loyalty when you need them the most.

The danger of growing old is growing comfortable and complacent at the same time. We should seek out the new and strange and applaud it and throw wild fecking parties whenever it walks into our lives. We should be building roads in and out of our own wee heads rather than erecting walls around them.