Viola Parraz > Viola's Quotes

“It’s inevitable. But we pretend it isn’t until that point where we can’t deny it anymore. Then we begin to repent.”
“Repent for our sins.” I nodded.
“No! We repent for the opportunities that we missed. The doors we should have walked through.”
― Michael Deeze, The Deathbed Confessions

“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

“Although enemy forces had overrun the mortar and some gun positions, they did not have everything their own way.”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy

“Without divine love, there would be no evolution, no knowledge; it is the source of all that exists.”
― Raz Mihal, Just Love Her

“After that, nothing was the same. The very notion of my having a family turned vague, hard to credit, even weirdly jokey.”
― Michael Wyndham Thomas, The Erkeley Shadows

“But this Scroll too has magical properties. From the moment I first saw it, the paper warmed to my touch. I know it came alive as I held it. Did you know there’s a serpent on the back? Some say it’s a dragon. It winked at me. Its lashes are gold.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“He totally lost it. Here comes the apoplexy.”
― Andri E. Elia, Yildun: Worldmaker of Yand

“Think about it this way—if we die together, you won’t have to mourn me.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“Come back,’ he whispered. ‘Magnus. How am I supposed to tell Magnus? He’s turning nine next week, you know. He wants pancake cake. How do you make pancake cake, Eva? You were the one who was going to make it, you bought the raspberries and everything. They’re already at home in the freezer, how am I supposed to go home and open the freezer and there are the raspberries that you bought to make pancake cake and how am I supposed to…’ David screamed. One long sound until all the air was gone from his lungs. He pressed his lips against her knuckles, mumbled, ‘Everything’s over. You don’t exist any more. I don’t exist. Nothing exists.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, Handling the Undead

“Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I could tell you an extensively strange story, I warned.

Oh, good! Gram said. Delicious!”
― Sharon Creech, Walk Two Moons

“...to be present in our vaginas, to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humor, to make them visible so they cannot be ravaged in the dark without great consequence, so that our center, our point, our motor, our dream, is no longer detached, mutilated, numb, broken, invisible, or ashamed.”
― Eve Ensler

“Five hundred years ago, the Greek philosopher Xenophanes wrote, ‘There is one God, always still and at rest, who moves all things with the thoughts of His mind.’ In this year, I, the philosopher Seth, mathetes of the philosopher Philo Judaeus, teaching my favorite students in Alexandria, would add, it is not that there is one God but that God is One, meaning All There Is.”
― Ki Longfellow, The Secret Magdalene