Ashes of Man Quotes

“I told you once that the universe has no center, and thus every point is its center, and it is so. If I have strained you, reader, by my repeated insistence that every action matters, that every moment of every life is the moment, the axis about which all things turn, understand that I say these things because they are true. Every step, every turn, every refusal to step. Everything matters. The cosmos is not cold or indifferent because we are not indifferent, and we are a part of that cosmos, of that grand order which has dropped from the hand of He who created it. Every decision creates its ripples, every moment burns its mark on time, every action leads us ever nearer to that last day, that final last battle and the answer to that last question: Darkness? Or light?”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“One cannot step in the same river twice, and home is not home when you return, for you are not yourself. The man you were yesterday died yesterday, and is only a piece of the man of today, as you will be tomorrow.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“But there are women and women, commander. Some ask nothing of us, and so we are nothing to them. But there are those women who ask all of us. Those are the ones worth giving all for.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“But to know a thing and to see it, to experience it, are as different as the moon and the finger pointing to it. Knowledge is not truth, only the apprehension of it. Experience is something else entirely.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“I read,” I said, and shrugged. “People always accuse me of wasting my time, but they don’t complain when I have their answers.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“Evil occurs because we are insufficient to challenge it. Too weak to stop it at the gates, too blind to see it bubbling within. Were we all angels in our virtue and heroes in our capacity, we might hold all chaos at bay, might stop even the unkindling of the stars. Yet we are but men.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“We keep making the same choices. The same mistakes. So the same wisdom will ever serve us.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“The dead become ever closer companions as we grow old ourselves and nearer eternity. And afterlife or no, they live on in us. Perhaps that is why it seems we have ghosts. Because we carry them in ourselves.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“Against such demons as these, all men are brothers.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“We have need of heroes, however broken, however terrible, however insufficient they may be. And we have need of more than one hero, for heroes do break, you know.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“As she moved toward the water closet, I asked her a question. A very old question. “Valka,” I said, and cleared my throat. “Am I a good man?” She turned then—hands on the door frame—and surveyed me a long time. What did she see with those inhuman eyes? Those eyes that saw everything without exception, without distortion? A smile split her face. A true smile, brighter even than her pity had been bright. “You’re still asking that question?” she managed to say, laughter cracking her words. “After all this time?” I could only blink at her. “Do you not have your answer a hundred times over?” A brief tremor shook her arm, but she hid it behind her back and shook her head again. “Monsters don’t have doubts.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“Who was it said you could move planets with a big enough lever? Shakespeare?” “Archimedes,” I said, leaning against the rail. “You always know,” Lin said, a small laugh escaping him. “How is it you always know?” “I read,” I said, and shrugged. “People always accuse me of wasting my time, but they don’t complain when I have their answers.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“If I have strained you, reader, by my repeated insistence that every action matters, that every moment of every life is the moment, the axis about which all things turn, understand that I say these things because they are true. Every step, every turn, every refusal to step. Everything matters.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“How can we ever hope to prevail against such demons, I ask you?” “By being demons ourselves, sire,” I said.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“We believe war is waged by heroes and brave men, and it is so. But war is waged as much—and more—by those not brave at all. I am not Pallino, I am not sure I ever was. No Son of Fortitude, me. Only an old man too afraid and too tired to run.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“Nothing endures, nor lasts forever. Not stone, not empires, not life itself. Even the stars will one day burn down—as I have seen and know perhaps better than any other man. Even the darkness that comes after all will one day pass away to new light. This record, too, and this warm scribe—my hand—perhaps, will fade. The stones here on Colchis shall fall into the sea, and the sea dissolve to foam. The stars shall burn the worlds to ash, and cool themselves to cinders. All things fade. Fall. Shatter.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“More than any other of our servants, you have suffered in our name.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“My dead outnumbered my living—as becomes true for each of us in time. The dead become ever closer companions as we grow old ourselves and nearer eternity. And afterlife or no, they live on in us.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“The ugliness of the world does not fade and pass away. Have I told you that? That fear and grief are not made less by time? All life is tragedy, for all life must end—and so no life grows stronger by its ending. Dorayaica was right about one thing. Time runs down into darkness. Even the stars burn out. And scars . . . there are scars that not even Death can wash away.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“It is written that no guide is known that can shelter the world from grief, for no man knows what God intends.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“If what I have suffered, if what I have done disturbs you, Reader, I do not blame you. If you would read no further, I understand. You have the luxury of foresight. You know where this ends. I shall go on alone.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“There are endings, Reader, and this is one. Of all the wounds I have suffered, the marks of sword and lash and claw—the very worst left no scar. The greatest part of me, my very heart, will forever lie scattered with the ashes on the winds of Perfugium. With her. The empty silence where she used to be is with me still, even as I mark this parchment.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“It is hard to live. Easier perhaps to die. Easier at least to be dead, though the gate is harder won when one raises the portcullis himself than those who have not tried it believe. And yet I found I did not wish for death, though neither did I wish for life. I would fight—when the time came—as an animal fights, wild and without plan.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“Perfugium was no victory. It was a holocaust. And for me? It was the end. For there are endings, Reader, have I not said? All that follows here, all that must follow, that must be, happened to a different man. A lesser man. I have consoled myself on sleepless nights—and there have been thousands—that she did not suffer, that she felt no pain. More, I have consoled myself that they could not have found her body. There must have been nothing of her left.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“I have heard it said that I faltered in my command, that it was for that failure that the Emperor exiled me, banished me from the Imperium. It isn’t so. My crime was something else. Something smaller . . . and more foolish. So foolish. But there is yet truth in their stories. Namely, Bassander Lin. The Phoenix of Perfugium. I was not with him in his hour of glory, whatever the stories say—nor was his victory my failure. I did not even see it, unless it was in those red flashes in our sky. As I stood there, hollow and broken again, Lin pulled off one of the most stunning rescues in Imperial naval history. His fleet scattered, his ships outgunned, Bassander Lin managed to intercept and salvage the refugees who had escaped Resonno and Perfugium’s gravity entire. Six hundred twenty-three ships had made it into orbit in those first four waves. More than three hundred thousand people. Lin saved six hundred and six.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“I felt the dead wind in my hair, and smelled the foul burning of the ashes of man.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“Valka is dead. How could they play on, actors and shadows moving, everything moving? How could they still be moving? Did they not know the world had stopped? That it had ended mere minutes before?”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“Only the past is written. Time runs down, and what once was never comes again. Never, never, never, never. Never.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“Sharply then, in that moment, did I understand his fever, his fury and drive to save these people. There was nothing he could do himself, either. Nothing but command, nothing but make his wishes known and move the lesser pieces on the board. For all his power, all his station, his breeding and command, the king could move but one square at a time.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“I told you once that the universe has no center, and thus every point is its center, and it is so. If I have strained you, reader, by my repeated insistence that every action matters, that every moment of every life is the moment, the axis about which all things turn, understand that I say these things because they are true. Every step, every turn, every refusal to step. Everything matters.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man