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“He feels again the sensation he has had all his life: that she is the other side to him, that they fit together, him and her, like two halves of a walnut. That without her he is incomplete, lost. He will carry an open wound, down his side, for the rest of his life, where she had been ripped from him. How can he live without her? He cannot. It is like asking the heart to live without the lungs, like tearing the moon out of the sky and asking the stars to do its work, like expecting the barley to grow without the rain.”
― Hamnet
― Hamnet
“I AM THE SHADOW THAT DEVOURS ROCKS, mountains, forests, and rivers, the flesh of beasts and of men. I slice skin, I empty skulls and bodies. I cut off arms, legs, and hands. I smash bones and I suck out their marrow. But I am also the red moon that rises over the river, I am the evening air that rustles the tender acacia trees. I am the wasp and the flower. I am as much the wriggling fish as the still canoe, as much the net as the fisherman. I am the prisoner and his guard. I am the tree and the seed that grew into it. I am father and son. I am assassin and judge. I am the sowing and the harvest. I am mother and daughter. I am night and day. I am fire and the wood it devours. I am innocent and guilty. I am the beginning and the end. I am the creator and the destroyer. I am double.”
― At Night All Blood is Black
― At Night All Blood is Black
“We never abandon those who gave us life.”
― At Night All Blood is Black
― At Night All Blood is Black
“Any event that surprises a man has already been experienced by other men before him. The effects of all human possibilities have already been felt. Nothing that might happen to us here, as terrible or as felicitous as it might seem, is new. But what we experience is always new because every man is unique, the way every leaf and every tree is unique. Men share with each other the same lifeblood, but each feeds himself from it differently. Even if the new isn’t really new, it’s always new for those who, ceaselessly, wash up on the world’s shores, generation after generation, wave after wave. So, in order to find yourself in life, to not lose yourself on the path, you must listen to the voice of duty. To think too much about yourself is to falter. Whoever understands this secret has the potential to live in peace. But it’s easier said than done.”
― At Night All Blood is Black
― At Night All Blood is Black
“What is the word, Judith asks her mother, for someone who was a twin but is no longer a twin?
Her mother, dipping a folded, doubled wick into heated tallow, pauses, but doesn't turn around.
If you were a wife, Judith continues, and your husband dies, then you are a widow. And if its parents die, a child becomes an orphan. But what is the word for what I am?
I don't know, her mother says.
Judith watches the liquid slide off the ends of the wicks, into the bowl below.
Maybe there isn't one, she suggests.
Maybe not, says her mother.”
― Hamnet
Her mother, dipping a folded, doubled wick into heated tallow, pauses, but doesn't turn around.
If you were a wife, Judith continues, and your husband dies, then you are a widow. And if its parents die, a child becomes an orphan. But what is the word for what I am?
I don't know, her mother says.
Judith watches the liquid slide off the ends of the wicks, into the bowl below.
Maybe there isn't one, she suggests.
Maybe not, says her mother.”
― Hamnet
Nikita’s 2025 Year in Books
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