Kushaniverse Quotes

“She gets all her old cars and tools from places you don’t want your daughters to visit. And Rashad Gaumont certainly doesn’t want her to visit Magic Mama, the not-evolved-enough, middle-aged man who lives in the Junk Land and works in the Old City. “He’s not a citizen! He lives in a bus! So what if he made it himself? So what if he teaches you about machines? Just don’t meet him.”

“Why?” Kusha used to ask Rashad, and she’d always get the same answer: “The unevolved kind brings chaos and wars.” ”
― Misba, The High Auction

“He senses his feet touching the floor; he tunes himself to the universe. The waves of prana in the floor and the push of music relax his muscles.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Maroc leaps down to the ring-yard, passes a pond of lilies, then the big stones around a purple willow tree and the sandy ground where only training happens. He fixes the gloves on his hands, just as the knight of Kuhawk should before dealing with an unwanted intruder of this … house? Manor? Palace? … No matter what you call it, if you knew its secrets, you’d call it something else entirely.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Will of Slayer!
Maroc guards himself against the Will of Slayer the Mesmerizer emits. His prana shields him firmly. He even goes far enough to murmur something under his breath and not just think it—the word his Master Ruem taught him. It keeps his body warm.

“Burn it,” the Mesmerizer mutters. The air turns denser. If air had consciousness, it would feel the weight of his voice now—the King of Mesmerizers’ voice.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“From above, the entire plan of Kuhawk looks like a bird’s nest; the globe looks like a gem at the center.
It’s quiet. Except for the times when music happens.
Like now—

One room in the two-story building glows, violin music emanating from it. Maroc is playing for his master: The Roar of Death Sonata, 1st Movement, one of the legendary Eleven Pieces composed after the Apocalypse.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Every unevolved Low Grade will avoid talking about how it feels partying among the High Grades, won’t they? Won’t they try to hide that they had to hear about the healing powers of a High Grade’s semen?”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Kusha searched about it on the Central Library’s online archive after coming from the auction. Of course, it was a lie.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Nothing physical from the body of a High Grade can heal. No matter if it’s blood or sperm or saliva or even a discarded hair or nail—as some fraudulent religious groups claim, taking advantage of Low Grades’ fascination with the living gods among them.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Distractions ended. Thoughts began. Then thoughts stopped, too, and the universe entered.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Living around the West Alpha among the High Grades who age exceptionally slowly, one or two wrinkles around the eyes, a few greyed hairs along your ears are enough to call you old. Even if your spine is still strong and straight.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Yuan frowns. Nothing should interrupt a Sufi Raag. His frown disappears soon after. A monk must never lose control over his emotions. Not even the deaths of thirty-seven seemingly-pet, rare animals can make him lose it.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Junk Land—most of it is trees, hills, and old broken things. At least it has empty air space, open to sky and free from air-traffic. It’s the space that is too costly to be owned by the people living around, and too embarrassing to be owned by the ones who can afford them. It spreads all over the world outside the cities like swollen veins crawling through the flesh.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“And just like that, her mind drifts off, yet again, right in front of Meera, forgetting it’s rude to drift off during a conversation.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Kusha heard people whisper about it in the Old City—the lawless city where sunlight never reaches the ground.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Rashad and Meera Gaumont do everything without noise. All. The. Time. They’re High Grades—Grade A: 107-year-olds with ageless bodies, and they follow the Untouchable Code by heart.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“It worsened when ads started coming up on her HOME page after reading it. The ads had horrible titles:

Dream Youth For The Low Grades.
Alternate Longevity.
A Secret Pleasurable Way To Youth.
Get Your Dream Citizenship With A Pleasing Pleasure Contract.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Secrets came as they inhaled the cosmos, the prana, and not just the air.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“It’s the West Alpha Residential Section—the part of the city where you must be able to afford the airspace around equalling 3000% of the volume of your house (all of which should be left empty so others may enjoy the sky).”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Not that they need to think about the don’t-get-laid-with-a-Low-Grade code anyway. They’re loyal to each other. High Grade couples who stay together for sixty years are rare.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Meera heals her colossal plants and flowers with her strong prana, her core energy. Healing isn’t a feat a Low Grade can do.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“She’s a twenty-three-year-old. By this time, people become at least Grade C while she started the grade race only seven years ago.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“It’s hard not to be glad that the Apocalypse happened. Or they never could’ve found the highest possibilities for humans.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“From here, their neighbors’ houses look like dots on the ground or balloons in the air.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Yes, time. Win time, live in youth forever, and you’ll pass Grade A, but it’s not the end. Some evolve more, for the evolution of the mind is exponentially infinite. Some High Grades have been Grade A for fifty years. Fifty. Solid. Years!”
― Misba, The High Auction

“The Himalayan music in flute and Sarod—a nineteen-string-instrument—rings in the silence again. He remembers building Alpha, the first city, formed after World War III. The city has one motto:

WE STAY TOGETHER.

They have the motto ever since the war. But these three words got imprinted in his brain much earlier than that. How? The Monk doesn’t remember. Yet, at one point, in the very distant past, these three words became their religion. Their religion, and not his. The distant past of his was never without that man, the Mesmerizer.”
― Misba, The High Auction