Rinaldo

“What if you could peel a pearl? Take a fine knife and a magnifying glass and strip the layers of glint and glimmer year by year, until at last you reached the bit of wrong that had birthed the shine. But you’d have no pearl left.”
― Max Gladstone, Last Exit

“The world starts with a story. So do dynasties and eras and wars. So does love, and so does revenge. Everything starts with a story.”
― Nghi Vo, The Brides of High Hill

“Because myths miss out all the sordid realities and preserve only What we wish we’d done, rather than How we actually did it.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race

“Vakul is also a common Kwen word for a valley or depression where a river might flow. There is no river there now, but there might have been once, and there might be one day again. All living creatures have in them some good, some bad, and a lot of vakul. But vakul can’t be all you are if you expect the love of your gods and fellow mortals. A ravine won’t water crops or quench the dying. At some point, there has to be a river, or what good can you really claim? If the man of good intentions never manifests a river, only calamity, should he not go to hell?”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven