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“Shae gave a nod of silent understanding. Niko had put into words something she'd felt for a long time -- a sense that she struggled not only against the Mountain and all the other enemies of the clan, but against something even larger and more inexorable.

Niko lowered his gaze to his hands. "I thought I could escape and find some other meaning in my life. But if the clan crumbles, either quickly or slowly, if it becomes as obsolete and irrelevant as people like Jim Sunto believe, then everything that made me, including my father's murder and my mother's execution, would be meaningless. Every drop of blood spilled, every sacrifice made, every child ever trained to wear jade as a Green Bone warrior of Kekon over centuries of history.... That's what the Pillar carries. That's our power, and ours alone." He looked back toward the school with a small, sad smile. "Ru tried so hard to tell me that I was a selfish fool to run away from it. He was right.”
― Fonda Lee, Jade Legacy

“The clan is my blood and the Pillar is its master,” she whispered. “I have a lot of regrets in life, but those oaths aren’t one of them.”
― Fonda Lee, Jade War

“It wasn't that he didn't care for those around him, only that he did it quietly. Such solitude, day after day, without anyone to see or notice, was also a kind of torment.”
― Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou, The Husky and His White Cat Shizun: Erha He Ta De Bai Mao Shizun (Novel) Vol. 2

“War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who remains.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War