Stephen Hardesty

“A man who is not suspicious of a philosophy that appeals to his nature is like the bull comforted by the rutted path that leads to the slaughterhouse. —I Sip a Cup of Wind by Jumet”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Hod King

“In his eagerness to defer to Marya’s wishes, in his determination to admit and account for his own faults, he had failed to see the duke for what he truly was. There had been plenty of signs that the man’s character was driven by antipathy, entitlement, and the sort of insecurity that praise alone cannot sate, an insecurity that requires the suffering of others to be assuaged. Wilhelm’s contempt for institutions of learning and educated persons; his tolerance of violence and indifference toward injustice; his habit of mocking and tormenting everyone, even his friends—were all the hallmarks of a bully.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Hod King

“The human race will go marching into that conclusive dark, singing our ballads and telling our stories and embellishing our walls with loafing nudes because that is who we really are: creatures who’ve only begun to believe in the scarce beauty of ourselves, and just in time for the point to be moot.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Fall of Babel

“Black man invented plasma. Fellow named Charles Drew. I read somewhere that he bled to death after a car accident in the nineteen fifties because some cracker North Carolina hospital didn’t have any ‘Negro blood’ in the fridge and refused to give him ‘white blood.”
― Dan Simmons, Carrion Comfort