Isaiah Cooper

“We are not ourselves. We are not allowed, to be ourselves. To be ourselves is a crime, to be ourselves is a sin. To be ourselves is theft. We are work, only work. We are the wood we tear from our country’s trees, the ore we dig from our country’s bones, the corn and wheat and grain we grow in her fields. Yet we shall never taste it. We shall not live in houses made of the wood we cut. We shall not hammer and forge our metals into tools for ourselves. These things are not meant for us. We are not meant for ourselves. We are meant for the people across the water. We are meant for the children of the gods. We are as metal and stone and wood for their purposes. We do not protest because we have no voice to protest with. To have a voice is a crime. We cannot think to protest. To think these things is a crime. These words—these words you hear—they are stolen from myself. We are not chosen. We are not the children of the gods. We are the soulless, we are ash-children, we are as mud and dirt. But if this is so, why did the gods make us at all? And if we were meant only to labor, why give us minds, why give us desires? Why can we not be as cattle in the field, or chickens in their coops? My fathers and mothers died in bondage. I will die in bondage. My children will die in bondage. If we are but a possession of the children of the gods, why do the gods allow us to grieve? The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope. —ANONYMOUS SAYPURI TESTIMONIAL, C. 1470”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“Miracles are just formal requests, Shara thinks wildly. It’s like having a form preprinted and filled out and handing it in to get exactly what you want! But you don’t always have to do it that way! You can make it up as you go along, so long as you do it right!”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs