Navola Quotes

“He called it Firmos. Firmos was reliable. The hearts of wolves and stone bears and shadow cats and rabbits and deer could be trusted. The kiss of the wind upon whitebark and catredanto pine was always true, and never false.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“Soppros once said that only that which was not man could be trusted.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“We are all flotsam in the maelstrom. To swim at all is triumph.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“We are all as dogs before pain. We all, in the end, are of a shared weaving—and we all howl when we die.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“A whipped dog takes what love it can.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“broken. I was damaged. It was all true, and it was also all excuses. An escape not from my prison, but from my responsibility.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“Breaking too often with common trade practice meant isolation. Isolation led to hunger, to unrest, and oftentimes to a change in leadership.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“With all interests represented, politics becomes a fairer sport, if only because everyone is equally corrupt.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“Memories inhabit the minds of men. They are the myths we use to explain ourselves to ourselves: who we are, where we come from, where we go—just as I tell this story to you. We embroider our stories to explain, to excuse, to justify.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“The city was not a city, it was many cities, quadrazzo by quadrazzo, street by street, open sores and powdered beauty all up against one another.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“I imagined that I could almost feel the palazzo itself breathing, a lazy heavy rhythm in time with the breaths of its inhabitants, all of us drowsy and insensate under the high sun. All at rest.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“Enjoy this moment, now! Not those twisty turns inside your brains.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“Memory was not the word. Memories inhabit the minds of men. They are the myths we use to explain ourselves to ourselves: who we are, where we come from, where we go”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“I know you like the legends of the old gods. Are they true? Does it matter if they are true? Or does it only matter that they inspire a true feeling in you?”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“logic demands we gather many stories, not a single one. Only if we gather many stories do we discern a pattern, and then perhaps a truth.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“A woman must never let a man see her truth, for he will find her horrifying.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“What we desire and what is real are not the same.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“It is a painful thing to abandon all excuse. To accept that all responsibility is yours alone. To know that to forge through, or fail, is simply what is.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“This is how I know for certain that you are still a child. You speak of love as if it is some clear apparent thing. As if there is only one, as in Boltiricchio’s play. A single Alessiana for a single Rodrigo. Boltiricchio’s play.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“Men’s lips speak honor, but their hands speak truth,”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“Do not worry about safety, think instead of stupidity. I have found that a man who is not stupid is also a man who is generally safe.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“The things you think Davico, they keep you from living. If you live in fear, you are not living. You are already dead. Dead long before any danger comes for you.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“What we see is that which destroys us.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“One moment you're clever, and the next you're a fool.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“I think the wisdom of one moment is the foolishness of the next. If you are lucky, you will find one scrap of wisdom as the cauri bird found the emerald, and if you are truly wise, you will know when to throw that jewel away as nothing but glass.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“Men worship a women’s form,” Aghan Khan said. “How is this an evil?” “Ci. Worship our form. Men make poems about our pretty lips, and then rage when we move our lips to speak.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

“You are men, I am a woman. We sail different seas. Trust is a vice a women can ill afford.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola