Mel

“I tried to find a way to go on. I could see familiar traces of the path that was my life, but there was always the wall behind me. Do you know what I mean? First you try and climb, pretending it never happened, but it's too tall. Then you try to go around, thinking you can fix it, but it is too far. Then, in frustration, you beat on it with your hands, but it does nothing, so you tire and sit down and just stare at it. You stare because you can't bring yourself to walk away. Walking away means that you're giving up, abandoning them.
"There is no way back. There is only forward. It's impossible to imagine there's any reason to move ahead, but that isn't the real reason you give up. The real fear--the terror that keeps you rooted--is that you might be wrong."
--Myron, Monk of Maribor”
― Michael J. Sullivan

“It is better to lack the semblance of honor but possess it than to possess the semblance and lack the honor.”
― Lynn Flewelling, Traitor's Moon

“Sometimes the price of dreams is achieving them.”
― Michael J. Sullivan, Percepliquis

“A life is no less valuable or beloved if one lives in an age of decline, than in an age of progress.”
― Mathew Barrett Gross, The Last Myth: What the Rise of Apocalyptic Thinking Tells Us about America