The Hod King (The Books of Babel, #3)

by Josiah Bancroft

“All I know is that, at the end of the day, dreams don’t matter, but neither does regret. We aren’t what we want or wish for. We are only what we do.”

It was more pleasant to back away from the heavens than to walk toward the grave.

“It’s possible, I think, to be so many things at once that you’re practically nothing at all. If you crush a mountain and spread it across a continent, it doesn’t make little mountains; it just vanishes into dust.”

“We pretend fashion exists to express our inner character, but for something created to distinguish, it certainly does seem to encourage a lot of conformity, doesn’t it? To be fashionable, we must pretend that what looks good on the mob looks good on ourselves. And we make-believe that we all look good because we are afraid of being judged ourselves. We are afraid of being singled out.”

“The trouble is you’re spoiled. You’ve eaten so many sweets you can’t taste them anymore.”

She was learning a curious truth about miracles: when piled together, they became ordinary.

There’s everything that came before, and that was one life, and then everything that came after, and that’s this life.”

“I’ve pondered that question: Am I the sum of my parts or am I something else?” “And what do you think?” “My sense of being, my identity, whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t reside in my parts. It lives in my past, and in the continuity of my present thoughts, and in my hopes for the future. I’m more afraid of losing a memory than a limb.”

‘Underestimating your inferiors is how every revolution starts.’ It’s all too easy to confuse subordination with obedience. It’s a mistake many a king has come to regret.”