Prodigal Son (Orphan X, #6)

by Gregg Hurwitz

Every time I consider myself an adult, I think back five years to when I also thought of myself as an adult. And I’m aghast at how staggeringly blind I was. Maybe what I hold to be true right now will seem just as ignorant when I reflect back on it years from now.”

“An old Zen master once told me that high explosives are sorta like relationships. You either get too much too soon or not enough when you really need it. Either way you’re screwed—and not how you want to be.”

“There’s a moral hazard to avoiding cost,” Evan said. “Making war less painful for one side makes it a lot easier to sell. Which means we’ll see more of it.”

It struck him that the same law of physics applied to any injury, physical or emotional. If you babied it, it stiffened even more, spreading the pain through you. But if you yielded, if you were willing to endure the white-hot agony of making vulnerable what you sought to protect, you had a shot at releasing it.