Theory (The Heretic's Guide to Homecoming #1)

by Sienna Tristen

I have to to make her proud, to prove she didn’t make a mistake, only I have no idea what it is and for years it’s felt like I’m wasting time, like she gave me this bewildering privilege of life and I’m abusing that privilege by not knowing what to do with it—there’s this, this urgency, and it is always pressing down on me to do something and do it quick because I’m dying all the time, even now, I’m dying, and I do not want the most impressive events in my life to have been my coming and going.

Ronoah, after his brief stint of resolve, had returned to his regularly scheduled anxiety.

That’s another thing you can take away from it all—the inescapability of history. The past of others is always influencing our present, our children’s future. We are moulded by the mistakes of those we will never know.”

How far do you have to push your boundaries before you can feel them stretch? How high do you have to climb before your horizon expands? Is it possible to notice your own growing, or is improvement like an eyeball—visible to everything but itself?

he chanced a look around, and the eyes that stared back made him feel at once transparent and impossibly solid. Like they were seeing him into existence, and like they were seeing through him into his story. Like staying alive was just a matter of being looked at closely enough.

doubt is like water, or sand, or shadow—it fills any cracks it finds.

“Know this: the most interesting people are interested people. The ones who sink their teeth into everything. The ones who ask what no one else is mad enough to ask. The ones who know you need to drown in something before you can understand it.

“Look, in the end nothing is good and nothing is bad, it’s all just action and consequence, it’s all just atoms talking over tea, and one day you’ll understand that but for now, if you must polarize everything into a false dichotomy, at least do yourself the favour of giving each side equal consideration.