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One time, in his first year, Mamoru had jumped from the steps to see what it felt like to fly. He had regretted the decision deeply when he hit the surface tension of the lake, but he would never forget the feeling of the wind roaring around him, so ferocious it started to feel like ocean.
talent is meaningless without self-discipline.
We can’t claim to be crime-fighters if we disrespect life just as much as the criminals we fight.”
Golden Rule
Real power needed no words. It spoke for itself.
what happened to a man who devoted his entire life and soul to a single pursuit only to fail entirely? Misaki supposed, after so many years of disappointment, he turned into a wrinkled husk of a human who could only find solace in tormenting those younger and better than himself.
“Why don’t you try taking responsibility for the things you can control instead of the things you can’t?”
You can learn a great deal listening to people with different experiences from your own.
“You know, Mamoru… you’ll be a man sometime soon. But just for today, let me be your mother and tell you in all my motherly certainty that everything is all right. The world is whole. You are on the right path. Everything is going to be all right.”
“A warrior’s sword isn’t made of ice or metal. It is his soul, his focus, his conviction.
You dont lie to your soul
What did she have to fear from a coward with no soul and no spine?
“I’m just too dumb to overcomplicate things.”
I’m angry all the time. It’s eating me alive.” “Then you have to do something about it,”
I retreat deep into the snow and rivers and sink myself into the ocean below, and everything on this mountain becomes me, and I become the mountain. It looks like meditation, but it is more. It is becoming a different sort of being.”
I can feel every molecule of water, from the rivers, to the snow, to the subtlest movements of the mist all around. In the midst of so much sensory input, any feeling in my human self—physical or emotional—becomes insignificant and therefore bearable.”
“It is impossible for ice to cut through steel. It is impossible for a jijaka to stop a tornado. You’re a Matsuda. The impossible is a day at the dojo for you.”
What sort of a man closed his eyes to the world and called it clarity?
She had taken every drop of hardship like a stroke of the hammer, turning it to strength, and she was stronger than Takeru.
Perhaps she was stronger than he was. Perhaps it was impossible for him to overcome this woman who seemed to carry the force of an army inside her. But she was right. A Matsuda didn’t balk before the impossible.
Once takeru realized misakis strength, that it was impossible to beat her, did he attempt to do the impossible
When you’ve been around the world and seen all different kinds of lies, it gets easier to see through them.
It had never properly occurred to her before that moment, but perhaps the thing she
found most attractive in men had never been power. It had never been danger. It was bravery. And her husband, facing these liars in a language that was not his own, was braver than any Matsuda facing an army on the battlefield.
A dragon knew when he was looking at worms and snakes.
They had been married fifteen years. It was the first time they had ever held hands.
the more ridiculously he behaved, the more she seemed to love him.
No matter what he grew into, she was excited to see it.
His willingness to change his appearance was just part of his particular brand of openness. If Robin sat down with a person, there was always a sense that they belonged to him and he belonged to them. As an orphan, he had learned to make family wherever he went.
“There was no way you could have understood. You can’t until it’s you.
a person’s tragedy doesn’t define them or cancel all the good in their life. I’ve had four wonderful children, whom I love. I still have three of them, and now, after all these years, it turns out, I have a good husband.”
Wholeness, she had learned, was not the absence of pain but the ability to hold it.
until she stood on that front deck with Takeru beside her and Izumo in her arms, she had never held this much love.
the simple magic by which she held herself together. Love for what she had and what was gone. Love no matter the pain.
