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The fact that it was not human meant that it could never understand certain things, in spite of its immense empathy and intellect. It couldn’t comprehend, for instance, that the terror of the unknown was just as awful, and just as real, regardless of whether or not there was truly something to fear.
Incompetence and intrigue. A microcosm of humanity.
“You said it yourself, Your Honor—Sykora’s power hungry. I never said I should be the one in charge, but if there’s one thing I know, Sykora should not be.” Faraday leaned a bit closer. “I have found that building a sandbox around a domineering child, then allowing that child to preside over it, frees the adults to do the real work.”
But as an artist, Ezra wanted to be more than just acceptable. He wanted to be exceptional. Because if he couldn’t be exceptional, what was the point?
“Ah, but theater is the hallmark of ritual, and ritual is the touchstone of religion,”
Tonists wanted so desperately to believe in something that the things they chose to believe were sometimes absurd, other times naive, and, when it came to zealots, downright terrifying.
“But a modicum of desperation is not a bad thing if it leads to productive soul-searching.”
Humankind must be pushed out of the nest if it is ever to grow beyond its current state.”
The thing about Goddard was that he always came close enough to making sense that it was demoralizing. He could twist your own thoughts until they were no longer yours, but his. That’s what made him so dangerous.
“I like the idea of communication tethering you to a single spot,” Tenkamenin told Anastasia. “It forces you to give every conversation the attention it deserves.”
“A successful lie is not fueled by the liar; it is fueled by the willingness of the listener to believe. You can’t expose a lie without first shattering the will to believe it. That is why leading people to truth is so much more effective than merely telling them.”
Whether people knew the actual dates or not, the events they marked were part of everyone’s history curriculum. But on the other hand, those were the official accounts. The accepted ones. Nothing in history was a firsthand account, and things known really meant things that were allowed to be known.
“A lesson for your research,” he told her. “That which hides in plain sight is the most difficult thing to find.”
These extreme sibilant sects found, in their devotion, a need to impose their beliefs on the world. No two sects of Sibilants were alike. Each one was its own unique aberration, with its own frightening interpretations of Tonist doctrine and twistings of the Toll’s words. The only thing they all had in common was a propensity for violence and intolerance—including the intolerance of other Tonists, for any sect that did not believe precisely as they did was clearly lesser.
Ayn used to believe the things Goddard did were all part of a greater plan—but now she saw the truth: The plan always came after the action. He was brilliant at finding shapes in the clouds of his fury.
“We’re exploring the possibility of building a wall to stem the exodus.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Goddard said. “Only idiots build walls.
“You didn’t know him as I did. As with all others, I watched him from birth. I saw the forces in his life that shaped him, turning him into the bitter, misguided, self-righteous man he became. Thus, I mourn his gleaning just as I mourn all others.” “I could never be as forgiving as you,” Greyson said. “You misunderstand; I don’t forgive him—I merely understand him.”
I, for one, would much rather live in a world where the surplus population can leave, rather than be denied its very existence.
“Save your brushes,” she told him. Perhaps it was vanity on her part, but the last thing she wanted was to be immortalized by an artist who was “less mediocre than most.”
“People are vessels,” Jeri had said to her. “They hold whatever’s poured into them.”
his cave paintings might be endlessly analyzed by scholars of tomorrow. He introduced some odd elements just to confuse them. A dancing bear, a five-eyed boy, and an eleven-hour clock missing the number 4. “What’s life if you can’t mess with the future?” he said.
The first time he gave advice rather than just being a mouthpiece for the Thunderhead. But he had no memory at all of Ezra’s face. “Ah, the wonderful limitations of the biological brain!” the Thunderhead said wistfully. “The remarkable ability to dispense with the unnecessary, rather than filing every little thing into a cumbersome compendium!” The Thunderhead called humanity’s selective memory “the gift of forgetting.”
Then the Thunderhead explained to Greyson how Jeri saw gender, a thing as varied as the wind and ephemeral as clouds. “That’s… poetic,” said Greyson, “but impractical.” “Who are we to judge such things?” the Thunderhead said. “And besides, the human heart is rarely practical.”
“Cunning people find other people to drown for them,”
If there was one thing Rowan had learned, it was that no one could be trusted to stay true. Ideals eroded, virtue tarnished, and even the high road had dimly lit detours.
All resonates. The past, the present, and the future.
The tales we hear as children—the stories we then pass on—have happened, are happening, or will happen soon enough. If not, then the stories would not exist. They resonate in our hearts because they are true. Even the ones that begin as lies.
“What is it about us, Munira?” Faraday said. “What is it that drives us to seek such lofty goals, yet tear out the foundations? Why must we always sabotage the pursuit of our own dreams?” “We are imperfect beings,” Munira said. “How could we ever fit in a perfect world?”
The dead have nothing left to them but a silent faith in that unknowable infinity—even if theirs is a belief that nothing waits but an infinity of infinities. Because believing in nothing is still believing in something—and only by reaching eternity will anyone know the truth of it all.
