Everybody says they want to live in peace; everybody says they don’t want to go to no war. Nobody wants to spend every waking moment looking to be killed or having to kill somebody to keep from getting killed. That’s what you would think.
...more
“Well than try giving it some thought, why don’t you? Apply that finely tutored mind of yours to all those bullshit hero-with-a-high-destiny legends you people are so fucking fond of telling one another. You really think, in a mudball slaughterhouse of a world like this, where war and privation harden whole populations to inhuman brutality and ignorance, where the ruling classes dedicate their sons to learning the science of killing men the way they consign their daughters to breeding till they crack--you really think the gods of a world like that have got no better thing to do with their time than take some random piece of lowborn trash and spend long years carving him into shape for a cat’s-paw?”
― The Cold Commands
― The Cold Commands
“They say, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger"....I don't agree. Some things that didn't kill me, came so close that they're still damaging. They didn't make me better. Some things made me worse. And can't that be okay too? Can't some things just break you? This whole fucking world wants you to believe that admitting defeat makes you weak. For God's sake, bleed. And bleed openly. There can be pride in vulnerability. Honesty is maturity. And really, it's the things that did kill me, that made me.”
―
―
“A guy told me one time, "Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner”
―
―
“If we could learn to look instead of gawking,
We'd see the horror in the heart of farce,
If only we could act instead of talking,
We wouldn't always end up on our arse.
This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;
Don't yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.”
― The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
We'd see the horror in the heart of farce,
If only we could act instead of talking,
We wouldn't always end up on our arse.
This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;
Don't yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.”
― The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
“One day is the day for moving on, and overnight, the next day, there is no more good in moving on, because you have come where you were going to.”
― The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin
― The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin
Medusa’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Medusa’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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