The Fate of the Tearling (The Queen of the Tearling, #3)

by Erika Johansen

These people are so damned proud of their hatred! Hatred is easy, and lazy to boot. It’s love that demands effort, love that exacts a price from each of us. Love costs; this is its value.

The tie of blood is only as strong as you want it to be. Some parents are poison, and it’s best to simply let them go.”

The mistake of utopia is to assume that all will be perfect. Perfection may be the definition, but we are human, and even into utopia we bring our own pain, error, jealousy, grief. We cannot relinquish our faults, even in the hope of paradise, so to plan a new society without taking human nature into account is to doom that society to failure.

You are special, everyone is special. But you are not better. All are valuable.

The faithful are easy. Easy to convince, easy to direct, easy to discard.

church was only as good or bad as the philosophy that emanated from the pulpit.