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Yun defended the world, and Rangi defended him, but as far as Kyoshi was concerned, her own sacred ground was marked by the limits where her friends stood. This is what I need to keep safe above all else.
“We care in order to be cared for. We care because we are porous. The feelings of others matter, they are like matter: they carry weight, exert gravitational pull.”
― The Empathy Exams
― The Empathy Exams
“No trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds. Out of wounds and across boundaries.”
― The Empathy Exams
― The Empathy Exams
“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.
As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”
― The Song of Achilles
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.
As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”
― The Song of Achilles
“There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”
― The Song of Achilles
― The Song of Achilles
“Empathy isn't just something that happens to us - a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain - it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it's asked for, but this doesn't make our caring hollow. This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.”
― The Empathy Exams
― The Empathy Exams
Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge
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— last activity Sep 28, 2025 07:29PM
An annual reading challenge to to help you stretch your reading limits and explore new voices, worlds, and genres! The challenge begins in January, bu ...more
basil’s 2024 Year in Books
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