Shattered (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #7)

by Kevin Hearne

I suspect that many of us, if given the chance to make one person in our lives love us more, would have no trouble in choosing where to point a finger. We are all needy, all vulnerable, all terrified that perhaps that person has an excellent reason to withhold affection. We shape our purposes to make ourselves worthy and often do not see until much later how it was love—or perhaps the lack of it—that both picked us up and dropped us off at crossroads.

Love can and does push the levers of power, yet there is no power that can force one to love another. It is a thing freely given and just as freely accepted or rejected. It is by degrees of love that we wither or blossom—and I suspect that this holds true in both the giving and receiving.

it is by our loves and hatreds that we are shaped and manipulated.

Failure is rarely a conscious decision and it’s often out of our control, determined by things like physics and circumstance and other people. What we can always control, however, is our reaction to failure.