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leaving her to listen to the clatter from the nearby halls and cubicles and wonder how it was possible to be surrounded by hundreds of people and yet feel entirely alone.
Having lived so long in the uncompromising sunlight of Hilo’s love, the absence of his affection was a lifeless and unending winter.
She was the softest and most vulnerable creature; she was the strongest and most unyielding of his warriors.
“No more secrets,” he agreed. So many problems between people, even those who loved each other, came from a lack of communication and honesty.
Shae might refuse what she most wanted for no other reason than to deprive him of the position of having been right.
It was three or four o’clock in the morning, as quiet as it ever got in Janloon. A holding place between the day that had gone and the one to come.
“I’ll be remembered not for who I was, but for what I wasn’t. Perhaps it’s for the best. Let the gods judge me for what I did not do.”
said, “I don’t think anyone can ever know if they made the right choices, but I don’t regret mine, so long as I’m still alive to be useful in other ways.”
He spoke confident part-truths on things he knew nothing about, he had the conceit to judge others on the basis of his own hypocritical standards and motives, and he dared to show contempt for a stranger’s family.
She could not win back his confidence all at once; trust that had been so dramatically spilled could only be refilled one drop at a time.
Maybe he had nothing in Janloon, but Janloon had him. Even rats had a sewer to call home, and Janloon was his sewer.
“Only children and gods are arrogant enough to judge what they can’t understand. There’s no point being afraid of their opinions.
Anonymity was something he’d never had before, and it was a glorious freedom that suited him. He was finally his own man.
You’d think it would be easier to face death as you get older, but it doesn’t work that way. You get more attached to life, to people you love and things that are worth living for.”
sometimes the most obvious solution required only the willingness to take the most unreasonable of actions.
Green Bones revered jade, but it was not the gems themselves that were worthy of reverence. Jade had meaning because of the type of person one had to become to wear it.
It wasn’t a purposeful and powerful fortune that had always swept him along in its inexplicable currents, that trapped him in suffering yet in the oddest moments protected him. It was insignificance.
Perhaps that was the great tragedy of jade warriors and their families. Even when we win, we suffer.
“Good men are remembered with love by their friends,” declared the Spear of Kekon. “Great warriors are remembered with awe by their enemies.”
All those doubts had over time folded themselves into Anden’s duality—of being a Kaul and not a Kaul. It was a contradiction he’d long ago struggled to reconcile but that now simply was.
she crossed to the window and became an outward gazing statue once more, but now the reddening light struck her differently, turning her from the still figure of a waiting general to that of a lone survivor on the empty battlefield.
The mind cannot adjust quickly to a fundamental change in reality without breaking. If the moon vanished from the sky, people would not believe it; they would think it was a trick of light or clouds.
