Ship of Magic (Liveship Traders, #1)

by Robin Hobb

“So may a harp string, struck strongly, awaken its twin, or a pure high note of a voice set crystal to shimmering as you have wakened truth in me.”

One doesn’t spank a child for courteously voicing an opinion. Nor does one strike a man for it.”

“It’s all a trick,” he observed. “All a rotten trick men play on themselves. They get together and they create this beautiful thing and then they stand back and say, ‘See, we have souls and insight and holiness and joy. We put it all in this building so we don’t have to bother with it in our everyday lives. We can live as stupidly and brutally as we wish, and stamp down any inclination to spirituality or mysticism that we see in our neighbors or ourselves. Having set it in stone, we don’t have to bother with it anymore.’ It’s a trick men play on themselves. Just one more way we cheat ourselves.”

Because she was stupid. Because she was not, after all, a human being. Tears welled afresh into her eyes, and the slaver Vivacia wept.

And cruel things have to be done, to undo worse cruelty,”

There was a quiet in the room that went beyond silence, as if they did not even share a language. The silence ached.