Catrina

“You're just afraid," I flung at him. "Of what would happen to you and your life at court if you were to carry Elisandra away. Of what your father would say. Of what Bryan would do to you."

Now he, too, looked angry. "I am afraid of many things, but those are not the fears that keep me from action," he said.

I turned my back on him. "Then I don't understand you," I said.

I heard the door open. "No," he said, "and you never have.”
― Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn

“So do I wish I was to be king? That is not a question I ask myself. I ask myself, Would I be a good king? Would I be quick witted and generous of spirit and full of that boundless energy? Or would I be clumsy and stupid and dulled by my own prejudices? I try to be a good man, since I am alive at all, and hope that that teaches me what I would need to know if I was ever faced with a higher challenge.”
― Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn

“I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them.”
― Turkish Proverbs