Where the Axe Is Buried Quotes

“We cannot wait. We must act immediately, and take the consequences. We must debate their results, and act again. Action cannot be the product of a final conclusion. Action and argument must be bound up together, driving one another forward, each correcting the other’s course. Action and argument together form an experiment, and nothing but constant experimentation will get us where we need to be. The system that contains us is not threatened by what we think of it. It is threatened by what we do about it. And the time for doing is always now.”
― Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

“Lydia, our daughter, was born a month before I began The Mountain in the Sea. She was four while Where the Axe Is Buried was being written. She has completely changed my outlook on life. My concern for her future is the main driving force behind this book’s creation, and behind all of my writing. I want her to live in a better world than the present one—a world where authoritarian government is the rarest aberration, and the future is something her generation thinks of with excitement and optimism, not dread.”
― Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

“But this time will be different. We are not going to only cut off the head: we are going to cut away the entire system. And we will succeed. Because I am the axe, Nikolai. Neglect buried me as a child, but then the state pulled me from the grave. That was their fatal mistake, you see: I am the weapon made for this purpose.”
― Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

“All systems collapsed eventually—and if they collapsed, that meant there was space for something better.”
― Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

“Paranoia is the only sane response to a world composed of keyholes through which the eyes of our enemies may peer at any time.”
― Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

“It’s called having a memory,” Jeenbaev said. “An inconvenience in politics, and something you, conveniently, are not burdened by.”
― Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

“Cynicism was the only healthy response to the world,”
― Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

“That was what history was like everywhere he traveled: someone had sanded the splinters down.”
― Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried