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The woman smiles. The smile is neither pleasant nor unpleasant: it is a smile like fine silver plate, used for one occasion and polished and put away once finished. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The gush of blood is positively tidal. Shara feels a little disgusted at herself for thinking only, This will definitely make the papers. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
If you wait and watch, she's found, things so often reveal themselves, despite your adversary's best efforts. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
There's no such thing as a good death ... It's just a dull, stupid thing we all have to do eventually. To ask meaning of it is to ask meaning of a shadow. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
We are beautiful, strange creatures of heat and noise, of sudden, inscrutable impulses, of savage passions. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Do you not enslave people now?" asks the man. "Chains are forged of many strange metals. Poverty is one. Fear, another. Ritual and custom are yet more. All actions are forms of slavery, methods of forcing people to do what they deeply wish not to do. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Good historians keep the past in their head and the future in their heart. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Is this how governments are made? Forcing decisions on wounded people in the middle of the night? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
No matter what happens, to either of us," says Sigrud, "you have always been a very good friend to m, Shara Komayd. I have known very few good people. But I think that you are one of them. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Time renders all peope and all things silent. But I will speak of you, of all of you, for all the time I have. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Here at the edges, in the cracks and at the crossroads, stepping from shadow to shadow in the river of darkness that runs through the heart of Wink, he feels much more at home. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Comes he walking windy-ways, wandering under spruces and through canyons and across shadowy glens, hands in his pockets and head bowed as if all the weight of the world lies teetering on his slumped shoulders. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
THERE ARE THOSE WHO COME UPON A CHOICE, A CHANCE, AND TREMBLE AND FEAR - WHY SHOULD I ALLOW THEM IN MY SHADOW? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Killing echoes inside you. It never goes away. Maybe some who have killed don't know that they've lost something, but they have. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
It's a symbiotic relationship: those two excel at being idiots, and I excel at shooting idiots. Everyone gets what they want. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Is it sleep you want to find?" he asks quietly. "Or dreams you wish to escape?" She -- Robert Jackson Bennett
When I come back to you, if I come back to you, will I know you? Will you be the city of my memory? Or will you be a stranger? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
We are - or were - Divinities, Shara Komayd: we drew power from the hearts and minds and beliefs of a people. But that which you draw power from, you are also powerless before ... A people believe in a god ... and the god tells them what to believe. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Is it ignorance if you don't care to know it?" "Yes. That is almost the definition of ignorance, actually. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
It is quite complicated, being civilised. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I love its potential. I hate its past. And I don't like what it is.' She hugs her knees close to her chest. 'The way you feel about the place you grew up in is a lot like how you feel about your family. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
History, as you may know, is much like a spiral staircase that gives the illusion of going up, but never quite goes anywhere. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The ship groans, moans, bangs, and clangs, miserably protesting this turn of events. 'I -- Robert Jackson Bennett
And then it was like there was a split in the world and George could see out of it, and glimpse the endless machinery that kept the world running. And then, for one moment, he could see even more ... -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I don't have the time or the energy to hate," says Shara. "I only wish to understand. People are what they are. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The Divine may have created many hells", he says, "but I think they pale beside what men create for themselves. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Forgetting ... is a beautiful thing. When you forget, you remake yourself ... For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must forget it was a caterpillar at all. Then it will be as if the caterpillar never was & there was only ever a butterfly. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
And if we were meant only to labor, why give us minds, why give us desires? Why can we not be as cattle in the field, or chickens in their coops? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I will not see you, she tells the city, but I will remember you. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
She realized she'd been thinking for years that she would not truly be pleased until she'd checked off this last achievement on her list, but one of the dangers of such thinking is that the event one hopes for never quite lives up to the expectation. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The world may not go on forever. But that does not mean we cannot try to make tomorrow better. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Men always forget that human happiness is a disposition of mind and not a condition of circumstances. - John Locke -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Assume nothing. You do not know until you know. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
He's not sure how all the cowboys stay so good-looking in the movies when the country is so openly hostile to sartorial maintenance. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I wish I did not know parts of the past; I wish they had never happened. But the past is the past, and someone must remember, and speak of it. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Peace is but the absence of war. War and conflict form the sea through which nation-states swim. Some who have had the fortune to find clear, calm waters believe otherwise. They have forgotten that war is momentum. War is natural. And war makes one strong. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
It is a fool who lives his life believing the waves upon which he sails shall remember him. The seas know nothing. This makes them beautiful. And this makes them terrible. - DREYLING PROVERB, ORIGIN -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Every second is a forever in Wink. Every day is a cool afternoon waiting to happen. And every life is one lived quietly, with your feet up and your sun-dappled lawn before you as you watch the world happily drift by. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
But freedom and human happiness has a direct relationship to the number of people who have power over their own world, their own lives. Far too many people still have no say in how they live.
The more power is dispersed, the more that will change. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
There is no crueler hells than committee work, -- Robert Jackson Bennett
One has no room for vengeance,' says Shara, 'when the eyes of the world are watching. We must be judicious, and bloodless. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Pitry regrets not defining the phrase "other side of the hill" more precisely. As he marches along the wandering paths, it increasingly feels like this hill keeps producing other sides out of nowhere for him, none of which bear any sign of civilization. At -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Just because the nightmare you expected comes true, it doesn't make it any less terrifying. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
No, you aren't sorry. You are a representative of your country. And countries do not feel sorrow. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The soul might be within the eyes, but the subconscious, the matter of their behavior; that is in the hands. Watch a man's hands, and you watch his heart. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Thus it was quickly decided that Pitry - being young, cheerful, and not in the room at the time - would be the best man for the job. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
You can be a girl at any age, you know. Girls at forty. Girls at fifty. There's a kind of flightiness to them, just like how a man at forty can have the impatience and belligerence of a five-year-old boy. But you can also be a woman at any age. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
After all, deep in every Texan's heart, there remains the steadfast belief that any problem can be solved with a big enough gun. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I was taught that peace is the absence of war. But I wonder if these days we've simply replaced conventional war with a war of paper. I'm not sure which is better. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
A 6-inch cannon. I've only ever seen those on a Saypuri dreadnought ... And it looks like they have, or expect to have, 36 of the damn things."
"And they plan to do what with them? Bombard the hills? Fight a war with the squirrels? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Coffee refreshes the body," says Shara. "Tea refreshes the soul. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
It is nearly two o'clock in the morning, and Tom Bolan is ass-over-head, military-grade, wearing-more-booze-than-he's-ingesting drunk. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I wished to be an artist," Ivanya confides to Shara. "But it simply didn't turn out that way. I didn't have the ... I'm not sure. The imagination, I suppose, or the ambition, or both. You have to be a bit outside things to make something new, but I was always very much inside things. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
What a foreign concept it is to die, to cough up what you are as if it is no more than mucus pooled at the back of your throat, and perish. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Everything, all of it ... it has been a huge mistake. This is what they need of you, isn't it? This is what idealists and visionaries ask of you - to make their mistakes for them. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Old texts say many things. You say these things as though they are special
as if it is unusual for one person to see another in pain, and wish to help. As if, he says quietly, to do the extraordinary
or what you think is extraordinary
a person must be told to do so, by the Divine. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Historians, I think, should be keepers of truth. We must tell things as they are - honestly, and without subversion. That is the greatest good one can do. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Wink? she thinks. Where the fuck is Wink? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
There is nothing worse than an opponent who is suddenly revealed to be understanding and compassionate. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
One should not seek ugliness in this world. There is no lack of it. You will find it soon enough, or it will find you." Taty -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Saypur says, 'Dance,' you say, 'How many turns? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Lonely places draw lonely people ... They echo inside us, and we cannot help but listen. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Life is full of beautiful dangers, dangerous beauties ... They wound us in ways we cannot see: an injury ripples out, like a stone dropped in water, touching moments years into the future. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Humanity's relationship with the Divine is one of mutual give and take, and we mutually opted to part ways. But this perpetuation - setting up a way of thinking, and just letting it run - it doesn't always yield good results. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Just because you won the War doesn't mean you can do whatever you like!' says Yaroslav. 'And just because we lost it doesn't mean you can strip us of everything we value! -- Robert Jackson Bennett
There is no better time to examine and understand one's selfhood than when it is dissected and hurtling through darkness. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
He remembers looking up in his jail cell and seeing a needle of sunlight poking through, and trying to cradle that tiny pinhole of light in his hands. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must forget it was ever a caterpillar at all. Then it will be as if the caterpillar never was, and there was only ever the butterfly. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The world is a coward ... It does not change before your face; it waits until your back is turned, and pounces ... -- Robert Jackson Bennett
And we convict almost every case, she thinks, because the law requires us to prosecute them for living their way of life. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Torture usually gets you whatever you want to hear. And people are usually much more forgiving of this method. Mostly because they're never quite sure any of it really happened. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
There is no crueler hells then committee work ... -- Robert Jackson Bennett
So if you're losing the debate, you change the conversation. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Miracles are just formal requests, Shara thinks wildly. It's like having a form preprinted and filled out and handing it in to get exactly what you want! But you don't always have to do it that way! You can make it up as you go along, so long as you do it right! -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I don't think we can build much of a future,' says Shara, 'without knowing the truth of the past. It's time to be honest about what the world really was, and what it is now. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
You've always believed war to be a grand performance. But to me it's just killing, just the ugliest thing a person can ever do ... So when you need to do it, there's no need to make a show of it. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I have taken many lives in my life. Many children, perhaps husbands, wives, parents. Perhaps it is only just that this same violation was inflicted upon me. Perhaps it is just that one who lives a life of war becomes a refugee from it. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Voters might have short memories. Politicians do not. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
And was it her imagination, but did the lump in her back move just a little as the boys' team emerged from the shadow of a willow and broke into sunlight? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The more you are at sea,' Sigrud explains, 'the more you learn. And the more you learn, the more help and assistance is a troublesome bother. Dealing death, after all, is a solitary affair. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The political instinct might wear different clothes in different nations, but underneath the pomp and ceremony it's the same ugliness. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Assume nothing, Shara reminds herself. You do not know until you know. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Where the hell are you going?" says Bolan. "The trunk. Are we ... not putting her in the trunk?" "Why the fuck would we put her in the trunk?" says Mallory. "Well, that's usually where I put unconscious people," says Dord. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Up by the fortress was this ... thinadeskite you mentioned?" Mulaghesh grimaces. So much for state secrets. "Yes. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
What a tremendous sin impatience is, he thinks. It blinds us to the moment before us, and it is only when that moment has passed that we look back and see it was full of treasures. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I never saw a country before," says the robed man. "All I saw was the earth under my feet. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I tried to learn. I wanted to learn to be righteous. I wanted to know. But I could only pretend. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Density, matter, radiation ... it's all just construction paper and pipe cleaners and glue, with the proper perspective. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
History will not let us forget: it wears disguises, reintroduces itself to us, claims it is someone new and wonderful. But let us not forget. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
When the auto arrives it's hard to believe there's a functional vehicle underneath all the mud and moss and sprays of gravel, which stick to the sides like barnacles on a ship. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Deserve.' How preoccupied we are with that. With what we should have, with what we are owed. I wonder if any word has ever caused more heartache. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
What I'm going to do up here, kid, is tell you a story. Like all stories, it's an attempt to make sense of something larger than itself. And, like most stories, it fails, to a certain degree. It's a gloss, a rendition, so it's not exact. But it'll do.
-Silenus -- Robert Jackson Bennett
To discuss the reality of our global position is considered impolite. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, yadda yadda yadda. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
But that which you draw power from, you are also powerless before. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Deaths of all kinds echo on. And sometimes, it seems, they drown out all of life. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The sort of people who intermittently review their children, she thinks, rather than raise them. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
If I leave anything behind in this world, I hope it is my work. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Why is it, she thought, that people always leave us just before we know them? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Time has a way of returning all heedlessness to those who commit it ... even if they are Divine. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
When in doubt, be patient, and watch. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
If one were to protest all the injustices of life," says Sigrud, "great and small, one would have no time for living. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
And then he understands: it's a loop, an endless loop of injured children, growing old but keeping their pain fresh and new, causing yet more injury and starting the whole cycle over again. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
O, the things we kill for our dreams, forgetting all the while we shall wake up to find them naught but dust and ash!
What fools we are to pretend that when we walk to war, we do not bring our loved ones with us. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
So many systems, so many pieces ... more complicated than the most complicated of clocks. I wonder, sometimes: are we truly one thing, one being, or many, many different things, simply dreaming they are one? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
In retrospect they might have started sleeping together solely out of conversational exhaustion. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could. Say what you like of a belief, of a party, of a finance system, of a power - all I see is privilege and its consequences. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Time renders all people and all things silent. And gods, it seems, are no exception. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
She devoted her life to this place, this work. If that doesn't make a home, Turyin Mulaghesh, then nothing does. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Sigrud is a hammer in a world of nails, and he is satisfied knowing only that. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Oh, propriety," says Mrs Benjamin. "We're always so concerned with propriety. Even in total madness, we still stick to our hierarchies and chains of command. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Vohannes turns and grins at her. "So! Here is the triumphant warrior, fresh off of her conquest. What an epic night you've had!" "Vo, I honestly do not have time for your supposed charms. How did you get in?" "By liberally applying my supposed charms, of course," says Vohannes. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
The older you get, the more voices you get in the back of your head. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important - that they are important. You don't get punished for doing something unimportant, after all. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Shara realizes she herself has done this to her own enemies many times: after all, why kill someone when you can make them out to be an incompetent fool? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Humans are strange. ... They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important - that they are important. ... it's vanity. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
When the world grinds you down, you pick a handful of fires to hold close to your heart. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Scars are windows to bitterness - it is best to leave them untouched. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Mrs. Benjamin does not precisely understand first aid, but she thinks she gets the general principles: things that are within the body must stay within at all times. If they do not stay in, they must be forced in, and kept there via things like gauze and sticky tape. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
It is not hard to believe that this is the land that birthed the nuclear age: anything feels possible out here. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
We think we move, we run, we push forward, but, I think, in many ways we are still running in place, trapped in a moment that happened to us long ago. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Why is it," says Vohannes as he walks her to the door, "that whenever we finish our business, it feels like neither of us got what we wanted?" "Perhaps we conduct the wrong sort of business. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Envy the fire, for it is either going or not. Fires do not feel happy, sad, angry. They burn, or they do not burn. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
These meetings, they're like thieves - they follow you around, wait until you're not looking, and pounce. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I want them worried. I want them to wonder if I am what I actually am. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
We all reconstruct our past because we wish to see how our present came to be our present - do we not? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
What is a blade but a conduit of death?
What is a life but a conduit of death? -- Robert Jackson Bennett
But this is wishful thinking: as the Polis Governor of Bulikov, the capital city of the Continent, it is her duty to preside over all trials, -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Nations have no morals," says Shara, quoting her aunt from memory. "Only interests. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I think you're wrong."
"Think what you like. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Having you is different from loving you. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
I am lost among the seas of fate and time
But at least I have love. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
It all tears away from us," he says, "like paper. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all - it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law. -- Robert Jackson Bennett
Death is for the weak. -- Robert Jackson Bennett