Elijah

“I was once uncertain whether it was right to love you, when the whole world seemed to quake in fear of you, and a thousand voices told me what was the right thing to do. But Mado was right: In all things that matter, faith in the heart is the only measure. But our mortal hearts are small; they are limited in what they can contain. What joy did it give me to hear that a thousand men lived to glory, when my heart grieved only for the loss of my brother? What does it matter if ten thousand men think the man I care for a tyrant, as long as I see him in a different light? Our lives are too brief to worry about the judgment of others, let alone that of history. You think my embroidery trivial, and yet all the works of men must be trivial in the fullness of time. There is no need for either of us to be afraid.”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“How can you say such things?!' demanded Kon Fiji. 'Our lives may have changed, but death has not. Respect for the elderly and honor given for a life well lived connect us to the accumulated wisdom of the past. When you die, do you wish to be buried as a common peasant instead of as a great scholar worthy of admiration?'

'In a hundred years, Master Kon Fiji, you and I will both be dust, and even the worms and birds who feast on our flesh will also have traveled through multiple revolutions of the wheel of life. Our lives are finite, but the universe is infinite. We are but flashes of lightning bugs on a summer night against the eternal stars. When I die, I wish to be laid out in the open so that the Big Island will act as my coffin, and the River of Heavenly Pearls my shroud; the cicadas will play my funeral possession, and the blooming flowers will be my incense burners; my flesh will feed ten thousand lives, and my bones will enrich the soil. I will return to the great Flow of the universe. Such honor can never be matched by mortal rites enacted by those obeying dead words copied out of a book.”
― Ken Liu, The Wall of Storms

“I am Mata Zyndu, I had come to study Huno Krima and Zopa Shigin, the heroes of the rebellion. But all I see is a monkey dressed up like a man. You're no different from any of the fools Mapidéré had elevated above their station. Neither Imperial fiat nor popular acclaim can make an ant into an elephant. A man can never fulfill a role he is not born for.”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“A real friend is a mirror who reflects the truth back to us.”
― Ken Liu, The Wall of Storms