Atharva Shah

“There is in every delicate thing, no matter how precious, nor how beautiful, a challenge. Break me. No bride of the Ancestor can see life as anything but the fragile, wondrous gift that it is. From the alpha to the omega we are all brothers, sisters, children, born of unity, bound for unity. And yet' and yet' those who take the red are trained to listen. Break me.”
― Mark Lawrence, Red Sister

“Do not be deceived. No real fight is bound by four walls. No real fight ends at a particular doorway or when we wash off the sweat and the blood. Fights end with defeat. And death is the only defeat a warrior understands. While we draw breath we are at war with our enemies and they with us.”
― Mark Lawrence, Red Sister

“There is, in the act of destruction, a beauty which we try to deny, and a joy which we cannot. Children build to knock down, and though we may grow around it, that need runs in us, deeper than our blood. Violence is the language of destruction, flesh so often the subject, fragile, easy to break beyond repair, precious: what else would we burn to make the world take note”
― Mark Lawrence, Red Sister

“Hers the stillness of the forest, rooted restlessness, oak-slow, pine-quick, a seething patience. Hers the stillness of ice walls that face the sea, clear and deep, blue secrets held cold against the truth of the world, a patience of aeons stacked against a sudden fall. Hers the stillness of a sorrow-born babe unmoving in its crib. And of the mother, frozen in her discovery, fleeting and forever.”
― Mark Lawrence, Red Sister