Buford Croff > Buford's Quotes

“I walked past Malison, up Lower Main to Main and across the road. I didn’t need to look to know he was behind me. I entered Royal Wood, went a short way along a path and waited. It was cool and dim beneath the trees. When Malison entered the Wood, I continued eastward. 
I wanted to place his body in hallowed ground. He was born a Mearan. The least I could do was send him to Loric. The distance between us closed until he was on my heels. He chose to come, I told myself, as if that lessened the crime I planned. He chose what I have to offer.
We were almost to the cemetery before he asked where we were going. I answered with another question. “Do you like living in the High Lord’s kitchens?”
He, of course, replied, “No.”
“Well, we’re going to a better place.”
When we reached the edge of the Wood, I pushed aside a branch to see the Temple of Loric and Calec’s cottage. No smoke was coming from the chimney, and I assumed the old man was yet abed. His pony was grazing in the field of graves. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds.
Malison moved beside me. “It’s a graveyard.”
“Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked.
“My father’s a ghost,” he whispered.
I asked if he wanted to learn how to throw a knife. He said, “Yes,” as I knew he would.  He untucked his shirt, withdrew the knife he had stolen and gave it to me. It was a thick-bladed, single-edged knife, better suited for dicing celery than slitting a young throat. But it would serve my purpose. That I also knew. I’d spent all night projecting how the morning would unfold and, except for indulging in the tea, it had happened as I had imagined. 
Damut kissed her son farewell. Malison followed me of his own free will. Without fear, he placed the instrument of his death into my hand. We were at the appointed place, at the appointed time. The stolen knife was warm from the heat of his body. I had only to use it. Yet I hesitated, and again prayed for Sythene to show me a different path.
“Aren’t you going to show me?” Malison prompted, as if to echo my prayer.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“She didn’t dislike it yet. After everything that had happened, that felt like progress.”
― D.L. Maddox, Killer

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.”
― Amanda Adams, The Voyeur's Yacht

“If an enemy ship cannot be taken over by our own crews, it must be sunk! There is to be no deviation from that!”
― Michael G. Kramer, Full Story of the Anglo-Saxon Invasion

“There’s so many reasons why!”
― Coco Calvoz Cordon, Debbie Wants No Words

“Love Has Neither Time Nor Distance.”
― Alexander Morpheigh, The Pythagorean

“I'm the biggest critic of my own work, but sometimes you nail a chapter so good that you have to take a step back and admire that bitch.”
― R.D. Ronald

“And every little burg had the same building hierarchy: banks, churches, insurance companies, and hardware stores.”
― Gary Clemenceau, Banker's Holiday: A Novel of Fiscal Irregularity

“Being born upside-down was just the first irony in Suzanne's life, a forewarning that her struggle with existence had just begun.”
― Ashby Jones, The Little Bird

“The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Nothing dies in Hell.”
― John Patrick Kennedy, Plague of Angels

“God, how impossible life is without money. Nothing can ever overcome it, it's everything when it's anything. How can I write in peace with endless worries of money, money, money? (“Disappearing Act”)”
― Richard Matheson, Collected Stories, Vol. 1

“He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe