Avatar: The Shadow of Kyoshi (The Kyoshi Novels, #2)

by F.C. Yee

People who were comfortable with their station in life tended to have less fear. They couldn’t imagine danger in any form visiting their doorstep.

Kyoshi had gone so long without her center she almost forgot what it felt like. Rangi made her human again, balanced and whole.

It took so long for the threads of mistakes and monstrous deeds to stop weaving into the future, to just tie themselves off and end. Maybe they never ended.

I swear, when it comes to my brother, I feel like my wits leave me. Certain people . . . they turn you into who you were before.”

there was pain and joy in all things,

Constant challenge was the key to growth.

“Honor cannot be coveted too dearly, young lady. Sometimes it must be laid down for the good of others.”

If Kyoshi could keep only one lesson she’d learned in her seventeen or so years of life, it was that your choice of traveling companions was the most important decision you could ever make.

Any pastime feels like the most glorious adventure when you’re young and in love.

“I believe I have to make peace with my own choices, just like everyone else.”

‘You either accept the risk of winning, or the guarantee of losing.’”

Human beings could drape themselves in titles and etiquette, but at their hearts they were all the same animal.

Better than open war was not a standard to live by. And yet people seemed content with it.

She didn’t have the right to lose herself in her rage and let it take her to oblivion. No matter what she’d been through. She wouldn’t allow herself to become a human scar, a compendium of personal loss. She had the obligation to be more than the sum of her grievances with the world.

Death and time made everyone small, reduced them to trivialities.

Only home could make you feel this bad.

There was no sense or structure to it, the way the world scattered lives into the wind like chaff to land so far apart.

Balance had been lost, or perhaps it had been restored to a form displeasing to humans.

People shouldn’t have everything they want. No one is entitled to their every desire. To live in balance, we must willingly decide not to take all that we can from the world, and from others.”