Rita

“I just don't understand what you see in her," Sim said carefully. "I know she's charming. Fascinating and all of that. But she seems rather," he hesitated, "cruel."

I nodded. "She is."

Simmon watched me expectantly, finally said. "What? No defense for her?"

"No. Cruel is a good word for her. But I think you are saying cruel and thinking of something else. Denna is not wicked, or mean, or spiteful. She is cruel."

Sim was quiet for a long while before responding. "I think she might be some of those things, and cruel as well."

Good, honest gentle Sim. He could never bring himself to say bad things about another person, just imply them. Even that was hard for him.

He looked up at me. "I talked with Savoy. He's still not over her. He really loved her, you know. Treated her like a princess. He would have done anything for her. But she left him anyway, no explanation."

"Denna is a wild thing," I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its nature and something unfortunately was hurt. The same is true of Denna."

"What's a hind?"

"A deer."

"I thought that was a hart?"

"A hind is a female deer. A wild deer. Do you know how much good it does you to chase a wild thing? None. It works against you. It startles the hind away. All you can do is stay gently where you are, and hope in time that the hind will come to you.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.”
― Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

“She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.
In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said, what she said, what they did, what they did then. Even the times they argued, fought, parted, agonized, rejoined. How they’d loved to cut themselves on each other, taste their own blood. We were ruinous together, she thinks. But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin