The Blood Tartan (Quest of the Five Clans #1)

by Raymond St. Elmo

Truly I was no pilgrim. I caught religion around twelve, just after the measles. I survived both. At thirteen I grew hair under my arms, between my legs, and tossed scripture to pious spirits and feeble minds. Two tribes I could never distinguish by dialect or dress.

Charity: the temporary purchase of relief from the pain of pity.

Madness is the ability to believe this world is something else than what we see. That you are someone else than what the mirror shows.

Vida longa, Ars brevis. Life is longer than most art.

Destiny is the sum of idiot trivialities. How can we think our lives rise to greater importance than a thousand coin tosses?

Can I see another’s woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another’s grief, And not seek for kind relief?

The longer you searched without finding, the more certain you were that today you must seek and find. Madness.

“Ah, you will be told that nonsense. ‘A name is a magic secret, the house-key to your soul’. They will say it so, looking wondrous wise. Bah. Never believe it. Defy it! Names are chains. We are the thing itself, not the name of the thing, nor ever the idea of the thing.”