The Burning White (Lightbringer #5)

by Brent Weeks

Moving fast doesn’t help if you move exactly the wrong direction. Dim people ride a mule to their conclusions; bright ones ride a racehorse. But not always in the right direction.

It wasn’t the hushed intonation of a supplicant seeking divine favor; it was the shock of an officer coming upon the scene of a massacre, with his men standing, bloody, near the innocent slain. But given time, horror fades, and repetition makes what was unthinkable now normal; the monstrous is made manageable. For mankind adapts to every horror. This can’t have happened. This happened but not often. This happened often, but this happens no longer. This happens still but not often. This happens often, but this is what must happen. This is what someone must do. This is what I must do. This is what I will do. I am doing this. I have done that, and it is what you must do in your turn.

She looked out, and her face filled with pleasure at the people united, purposeful, hopeful—and it made him ache. Her satisfaction brought vigor to her beauty, a feminine strength, not fragile like a bloom that might be crushed underfoot, but adaptive, stubbornly growing toward the sun. Like a sapling in good soil, rushing into her strength, that she might bend before a storm, but grow; or be pressed down today and spring back up tomorrow, having grown taller yet overnight.

If you think you’re helpless, if you think you’re powerless; as long as you can speak, you’re not helpless, and you’re not powerless until you’re too afraid to. If you’re trapped in the darkness all alone, how do you know you’re alone and not actually surrounded by an army of friends, also silent, also afraid in the dark, merely waiting for the sound of one voice to rouse them from fear, to fight for freedom? Silence is isolation chosen. Silence is darkness, and every evil loves the dark.