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“He did not know what love was. And he did not know what good it was. But he knew he carried with him, a scabrous spot of rot, of contagion, for which there was no cure. Rage would not cure it. Indulgence made it worse, flamed it, made it grow like cancer. And it had ruined his life. Not now, not in this moment. Long before. The world had seemed a good and liveable place. Brutal, yes. but there was a certain joy in that. The brutality on the football fields, in the tonks, was celebration. Men were maimed without malice, sometimes--often even--in friendship. Lonely, yes. Running was lonely. Sweat was lonely. The pain of preparation was lonely. There's no way to share a pulled hamstring with somebody else. There's no way to farm out part of a twisted knee. But who in god's name ever assumed otherwise? Once you know that it was all bearable”
― A Feast of Snakes
― A Feast of Snakes
“Accept the pain, but don't accept that you deserved it.”
― Oathbringer
― Oathbringer
“I never knew anyone who fucked up their life good who didn't think they were special. The holes they dug themselves into were exactly the shape of their dreams”
― Pike
― Pike
“They sold records out of the trunk of the Model A. They sold them with no trouble at all, folks digging up change out of their purses so worn the faces denominating it looked spectral, mere ghosts of themselves. They sold them to folks who did not even own phonographs, who had no prospects of owning one, folks who seemed to regard the records as talismans. Who handled them reverently and turned them to the light and studied the spiraling grooves as if they'd find there some physical evidence of their own provisional existence, as if their very lives were somehow encoded there”
― Provinces of Night
― Provinces of Night
“Thomas looked at her standing with her delicate arms and legs and thought how odd it was that children were small, and that they found this normal. He could not remember being small. What must he look like to her, standing so far above her, holding that murderous hammer? What did it feel like to know you lived or died at the whim of the giants around you?”
― Between Two Fires
― Between Two Fires
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