Sarah

“The Chantry!” Edouard objected. “You said yourself that there are more of the Monumentals out there! Destroy this ship if you must—I will not miss it—but we need you. Your daughter needs you!” I could not help but smile. “She needs you”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Shadows Upon Time

“We believe war is waged by heroes and brave men, and it is so. But war is waged as much—and more—by those not brave at all. I am not Pallino, I am not sure I ever was. No Son of Fortitude, me. Only an old man too afraid and too tired to run.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“Grief, my mother once told me, is love’s most honest expression. The last and hardest aspect of truly, truly caring for someone. She said it at her own mother’s funeral rites, tears in her eyes even as she tried to comfort a boy too young to understand why he was so sad, why his grandmother couldn’t be there anymore. She explained through choking sobs that without grief, love would be meaningless. Because it is impossible to truly love something that cannot be lost.”
― James Islington, The Strength of the Few

“The oldest argument for doing something wrong is that everyone is doing it. To dismantle what they have built would have required the agreement of every man who had spent his life building it," agrees my father softly. "It would have required them to give up all they have striven their entire lives to gain. And they would have needed to do it, largely, for the benefit of those at whose expense it originally came.”
― James Islington, The Strength of the Few