Robert Jackson Bennett > Quotes

“And Olvos said to them: “Why have you done this, my children? Why is the sky wreathed with smoke? Why have you made war in far places, and shed blood in strange lands?

And they said to Her: “You blessed us as Your people, and we rejoiced, and were happy. But we found those who were not Your people, and they would not become Your people, and they were willful and ignorant of You. They would not open their ears to Your songs, or lay Your words upon their tongues. So we dashed them upon the rocks and threw down their houses and shed their blood and scattered them to the winds, and we were right to do so. For we are Your people. We carry Your blessings. We are Yours, and so we are right. Is this not what You said?”

And Olvos was silent.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“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, City of Stairs

“My definition of an adult is someone who lives their life aware they are sharing the world with others. My definition of an adult is someone who knows the world was here before they showed up and that it'll be here well after they walk away from it.

My definition of an adult, in other words, is someone who lives their life with a little fucking perspective.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Miracles

“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, City of Miracles

“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, City of Stairs

“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, City of Blades

“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, City of Blades

“All things have a value. Sometimes the value is paid in coin. Other times, it is paid in time and sweat. And finally, sometimes it is paid in blood.

Humanity seems most eager to use this latter currency. And we never note how much of it we’re spending, unless it happens to be our own.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, Foundryside

“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, City of Stairs

“Civilization is often a task that is only barely managed. But harden your heart and slow your blood. The towers of justice are built one brick at a time. We have more to build yet.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup

“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, City of Stairs

“...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, City of Stairs

“Is it ignorance if you don’t care to know it?” “Yes. That is almost the definition of ignorance, actually.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“I never saw a country before," says the robed man. "All I saw was the earth under my feet.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“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, City of Stairs

“That’s the problem with figuring shit out—eventually you run into someone who’d prefer all their shit remained thoroughly unfigured.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup

“Pride…it’s so often an excuse for people to be weak.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, Foundryside

“But I am reluctant to assume maliciousness when incompetence is a better explanation”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup

“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, City of Stairs

“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, City of Stairs

“The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“What a tool cynicism is to the corrupt, claiming the whole of the creation is broken and fraudulent, and thus we are all excused to indulge in whatever sins we wish—for what’s a little more unfairness, in this unfair world?”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup

“So instead of committing robbery, I made tea.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup

“Sen sez imperiya. The Empire is strong because it recognizes the value in all our people. Including you, Dinios Kol. And when the Empire is weak, it is often because a powerful few have denied us the abundance of our people.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup

“Every innovation—technological, sociological, or otherwise—begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, Foundryside

“I am lost among the seas of fate and time
But at least I have love.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“Remember—move thoughtfully, give freedom to others, and you'll rarely do wrong ...”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, Foundryside

“Shara was already an avid reader by then, but she had never realized until that moment what books meant, the possibility they presented: you could protect them forever, store them up like engineers store water, endless resources of time and knowledge snared in ink, tied down to paper, layered on shelves.... Moments made physical, untouchable, perfect, like preserving a dead hornet in crystal, one drop of venom forever hanging from its stinger.
She felt overwhelmed. It was--she briefly thinks of herself and Vo, reading together in the library--a lot like being in love for the first time.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“I am sorrowful. I am sorrowful that I happened to be born into a world where being disgusted with yourself was what you were supposed to be. I am sorrowful that my fellow countrymen feel that being human is something to repress, something ugly, something nasty. It's... It's just a fucking shame. It really is.

I am penitent. I am penitent for all the relationships this shame has ruined. I am penitent that I've allowed my shame and unhappiness to spread to others. I've fucked men and I've fucked women, Father Kolkan. I have sucked numerous pricks, and I have had my pricked sucked by numerous people. I have fucked and been fucked. And it was lovely, really lovely. I had an excellent time doing it, and I would gladly do it again. I really would. I have been lucky enough to find and meet and come to hold beautiful people in my arms - honestly, some beautiful, lovely, brilliant people - and I am filled with regret that my awful self-hate drove them away.

I don't know if you made the world, Father Kolkan. And I don't know if you made my people or if they made themselves. But if it was your words they taught me as a child, and if it's your words that encourage this vile self-disgust, this ridiculous self-flagellation, this incredibly damaging idea that to be human and to love and to risk making mistakes is wrong, then... Well, I guess fuck you, Father Kolkan.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“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, City of Blades