The Bastard Quotes

“So the Giver of Death makes use of us and so does the Giver of Life. And these two are irreducibly One. And whoever does not understand this must learn to see with a single eye.”
― Mark Canter, The Bastard

“He sheathed the sword and hung it back on the wall. “I expect he is dead now.” He returned to his bunk. “I have learned that holding on to anger is like eating poison in the absurd expectation that your enemy will vomit blood. Anger destroys you—no other. You must not let that happen.”
― Mark Canter, The Bastard

“Maurus told me he believed I possessed what the Greeks call charisma. “If ever you learn to talk with people as you do with horses,” he said, “the world will never hear the end of your fame.” I shrugged. “Horses are simple creatures, all of one piece. People are complicated. With people, I don’t know what to say.” I did not go on to explain that to commune with animals, I joined them heart-to-heart, something I felt afraid to do with most people, even him. I trusted only Owiti and Magdalene and dogs and horses enough to share such”
― Mark Canter, The Bastard

“The colt closed its eyes. I was still kneeling next to it and something felt wrong. “I think it stopped breathing.” Maurus knelt beside me. The colt’s chest was definitely not moving. I bent and pressed my ear to its chest. The wet hide was slick and warm. “His heart is beating,” I said, “but weak and fast.” Maurice rubbed the colt’s chest briskly, but it did not start breathing. He strongly massaged the spine along its neck and smacked its flank, but it did not respond. He grimaced with sadness. “So close, little son. So close! Why won’t you breathe?” Owiti seemed on the verge of tears. “Let me try,” I said. I had once seen my cousin breathe into a lamb’s nostrils after a rough birth to prompt its respiration. The lamb had not resuscitated. But I needed to try whatever I could to help the newborn colt. I lifted the colt’s heavy head into my lap and opened my mouth wide, wrapping my lips around its soft nostrils. Holding its mouth closed with a hand pressed above and below its jaws, I breathed into it. Its lungs inflated, and I paused. The air spilled out. I filled its lungs and let them deflate again. I kept up a rhythm breathing into the nostrils, its lungs swelling and spilling like bellows, but it would not breathe on its own. Tears sprang to my eyes. The colt was so beautiful—new life still damp with the dew from the dawn of creation. A loud cry erupted from my heart and I slugged its chest with the heel of my palm, commanding it with all my love and hope, “Ata khayav likhiot—You must live!” The colt snorted and bucked in a spasm, kicked its long legs and jerked up its head, eyes wide open. He began inhaling and exhaling. I looked at Maurus, delighted. He regarded me with open wonder, then pulled me up off my knees into a crushing hug. He lifted me over his head like a straw doll and twirled around once, then set me down and repeated his ecstatic dance with Owiti. When he had set Owiti back on the dirt floor, Maurus beamed at me. “Did I just witness a miracle? Tell me the truth. Can you command the spirit of life?” “Of course not,” I said, laughing. “I’m Martis, not Mithras! No man tells the spirit what to do.” Yet in that moment in the lamp-lit stable, I knew what the Tanakh calls Ruach ha’Kodesh, the Whole Breath. The one breath the newborn colt and I shared, the very same breath the Giver of Life shared with man, blowing into Adam’s nostrils. The mutual breath of all existence.”
― Mark Canter, The Bastard

“marvels of equal strangeness. I found another way to help Wilda understand our brotherhood: I told her a story. Since I had left Nazareth, I had heard so many new tales of history and fantasy. Some of them were obviously the same yarn spun on the loom of different cultures. I heard a few versions of the Moses story: a baby boy floated downriver in a basket, rescued by a princess, and raised in the royal palace. There were various stories of a hero who built an ark to rescue a mating pair of all the land creatures and carry them above a world-destroying flood. And I counted a half-dozen variations of the god-man tale, in which a deity mates with a mortal virgin who then gives birth to a divine son, who, through some type of sacrifice, saves mankind from its sins.”
― Mark Canter, The Bastard

“The whole horrific experience taught me that it is evil for a man to die in payment for another’s sins. A blood sacrifice by the innocent to atone for the crimes of the guilty is unjust to both.”
― Mark Canter, The Bastard

“Celsus led a prayer of thanksgiving to Mithras, and most of those present knew the words and joined him. Something about the slaughter of a bull and the grace of being washed clean of sins by its sacrificial blood. The priest closed his eyes and raised his hands for a moment of silent benediction. Afterward he smiled and said, “Now that we have thanked our savior, we can return to our frivolity.” But indeed the transition to weightiness had added to the party’s waning momentum.”
― Mark Canter, The Bastard

“After the first week, I found I could trick my troubled mind into much-needed sleep. My method was to ask a question that had haunted my loneliness since I was a child: Why does God allow suffering? Isaiah supplied the answer: “I am the Lord, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.”
― Mark Canter, The Bastard