Stant Litore > Quotes

“He knew all the stories. His grandfather had given them to him when he sat between the old man’s knees as a child. It was a comfort, though, to hear them again. To call them to mind. All these stories that made him more than just a vintner and more than just a man who carried a spear whom other men were willing to follow. More than just a man who lay dying. The stories made him one of the People, who would never die.”
― Stant Litore, Strangers in the Land

“The problem with aging was not that death was near, for death was always near. The problem with aging was that a woman began to carry too many memories within her.”
― Stant Litore, Strangers in the Land

“when we were far from the urban dome of light pollution, we found the stars unbearably bright, as though someone had switched on the sky.”
― Stant Litore, Ansible 15716

“For the human memory is short, and even when we write it in stone we quickly forget and the stones crumble and even those stones then forget.”
― Stant Litore, Strangers in the Land

“You can wound my body, and it is only blood and bone. But wound my home, and you have wounded my heart.”
― Stant Litore, Nyota's Tyrannosaur

“What is Empire? Empire cannot be tasted or touched. You cannot smell it or breathe it or fuck it. It is not a fleet or a capital or a person. It is a story that is only real as long as people keep telling it. So we are not attacking a fleet or a capital or people. We are attacking the story. We are attacking the symbols that roar and screech at the heart of that story. That is how we will uproot and destroy Empire.”
― Stant Litore, Nyota's Tyrannosaur

“Waking to the reality of injustice is like the cracking of an eggshell. Your whole world had caged you and you didn’t know it. Once the cage cracks open, you can never get back inside. You are out in the cold and the weather. You can encounter a hundred new dangers. But also, you are free. You can stretch. You can run. You can bite. You can see impossible skies that didn’t exist while you were in the egg.”
― Stant Litore, Nyota's Tyrannosaur

“I think my mother’s god is running beside me in the dark, like a deer, and we flee the hunger of the earth together, and it is men, living or dead, who would devour us.”
― Stant Litore, I Will Hold My Death Close

“It was not enough simply to sit beneath her olive tree and decide what to do about the suffering that was brought before her. The navi must go out into the land and do what she could for the suffering she found there, whether she witnessed it in the eyes of her own people or in the eyes of a bereaved stranger wrapped in a salmah. She”
― Stant Litore, The Zombie Bible: Digital Box Set, Volumes 1-5

“This is what my mother tried to tell me in all her songs: that from the day we start to breathe, what matters to us can be taken from us, is taken from us, will be taken from us, until we are bound shivering beneath a knife or until we lie choking in the dust, wrinkled and old, and the men who have been inside us or who have come out of us have left us alone, at last, in the dark. This is why she was always afraid.”
― Stant Litore, I Will Hold My Death Close

“Most of the things we think we know are not true. So the few that absolutely are—our love for those we are joined to, our enjoyment of beauty, our need to be better than we once were—these few truths are infinitely precious. Hold them close, and near the heart.”
― Stant Litore, Nyota's Tyrannosaur

“I am walking uphill, toward the sky where my father’s god lives. And if, when I get up there, where there is nothing but empty air between me and the stars, if I hear his god calling, I will call back, and I will demand that he answer me. That he tell me why he wants me to die.”
― Stant Litore, I Will Hold My Death Close

“As a woman,” she added softly, “I know how important it is for someone to hear you, and how hard it is. There are so many places where I cannot speak, even if I had a lot to say; it wouldn’t be permitted, and you as my husband must speak for me. I cannot stand in the street like a man and cry out what is in my heart. God can’t do this either, I think. She needs you to speak for her. Without your words, the priests would keep her shut away behind that veil in the Temple, the way some husbands shut away their wives, or locked into the Ark; no one would hear her.” Her”
― Stant Litore, The Zombie Bible: Digital Box Set, Volumes 1-5

“Still alone. I’ll always be alone, won’t I, even if I feed a house, even if I feed a town, even if the lame walk and the mute sing. I am still alone. I am still standing in the desert, listening to the screams.”
― Stant Litore, No Lasting Burial

“My name. It’s … my name. Miriam bat Elisa. From Tower. From Magdala.”
― Stant Litore, No Lasting Burial

“Obeying the words of God is always more important than talking about them.”
― Stant Litore, Death Has Come Up Into Our Windows

“There is a windstorm in my heart.” Lappidoth put his arm about her, held her tightly to him. With his other hand, he took a small stone and set it beside the bread. “This is my wife’s heart,” he rumbled. Then covered the stone with his cupped hand. “This is my love for my wife, covering her heart. That the winds may pass over without tearing through her.”
― Stant Litore, The Zombie Bible: Digital Box Set, Volumes 1-5