The Broken Lands Quotes

“any book in the world - if there was only one way to read and understand it, what would be the point of reading that book?”
― Kate Milford, The Broken Lands

“The world is not simple. The world is not one place. It's the sum of an impossible number of incomprehensible things, and if you start out on any road in the world and follow it for any distance at all, sooner or later you enter into a strange country.”
― Kate Milford, The Broken Lands

“If you are what I think you are, it will come to make sense. It makes perfect sense to me, but I can promise you that what I understand is entirely different from what you do."

Now both Sam and Jin stared at him. "But . . . " Jin shook her head. "Then I'm wrong, aren't I? I really thought . . . but . . . "

"You think just because you and I understand two different things, one of us has to be wrong?" Burns asked.

"Well . . . yes. If it's a book of instructions--well, there has to be a right way and a wrong way to read it." Jin turned to Sam. "That's only logical, isn't it?"

"If there was only one was to read a book," Burns said with a little smile, "any book in the world--if there was only one way to read and understand it, what would be the point of reading that book?”
― Kate Milford, The Broken Lands

“Like most boys he knew, he'd spent his entire life trying to avoid doing anything--or at least, getting caught at anything--that might get him in trouble. Why would anyone want to be told that they deserved to be chased by some invisible, murderous being?

It was Jin who answered. "I think it's much worse to think awful things just happen without any good reason," she said quietly, worrying the single green bangle around her wrist. "If you . . . if you can believe you deserve to be hurt, then there's always the possibility that you can figure out what you did to deserve it, and you can stop doing that, and then . . . " She swallowed. "And then you can imagine that things might get better."

Tom Guyot patted Jin's hand, rigid and motionless as stone on her knee.

"You know that isn't the world we live in, darlin'," he said softly. "Would make life all sorts of easier, but things aren't that way.”
― Kate Milford, The Broken Lands

“Life makes you believe in certain things, a certain order. A certain reality. The world is not simple. The world is not one place. It's the sum of an impossible number of incomprehensible things, and if you start out on any road in the world and follow it for any distance at all, sooner or later you enter into strange country.

So, the world is not simple, but it would be much, much better for us if it was. And we can sense that, even if we do not understand or perceive the full complexity of things. So we look for order.”
― Kate Milford, The Broken Lands

“The black-eyed man leaned on the rail watching, listening, and acclimating while he inhaled the brew of sea air and coal smoke. There was something else in the air, too; a deep note, buried far below the scents and sounds that stirred on the summer breeze. It would’ve been nearly impossible for anyone else to detect. Humans were notoriously blind to the simmer of violence—which always amused him, considering how like a drug it was to them. The freckled and black-eyed man, not being human, could smell it as sharply as cologne. It was pervasive here, just like it was everyplace else he’d been in this country in the last twenty years, at least. Maybe more. It was easy to lose track of the passing time. He was far older than the flashy young fellow he appeared to be.”
― Kate Milford, The Broken Lands