Maria > Recent Status Updates

“What I really loved, what I love, is having-painted… Making something that would never have existed in the entirety of humanity had I not been there at that specific moment to make it. I resented work for this reason more than any other. The countless paintings that would never exist because I had to be working for money instead of painting. I resented my body for the same reasons…”

“Cyrus was trying desperately to keep himself upright. He scoured his mind to find the vital information around how to stand like a person, how to inhabit a body, but there was only shadow, shadows of half-remembered shadows. He felt like a windmill stilled in a field… All Cyrus could hear was ringing in his brain, some ear cell's final song, a frequency never to be heard again.”

“If he'd had a block of marble he could've carved the David. If he'd had a sword he could have sliced through a car. If he'd had a mother she'd be delirious with pride, holding him against her chest, wiping away his tears.”

“I had made the dress like I had made the tablecloth, out of pain and long work, and I knew how much of both it had taken to make it. And so I knew how much that dress would have cost, that he had put her in, and I did not want to think of how it had been paid.”

Loving Magra’s sections 👌

“‘There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away.”

“‘I can't change silver to gold for you in your kingdom...’

“‘Of course you can, mortal girl,’ he said over his shoulder, as if I was the one being a fool. ‘A power claimed and challenged and thrice carried out is true; the proving makes it so.’ And then he stepped forward and the heavy door swung shut in my face, leaving me with a casket full of silver coins and a belly full of dismay.”

"’Schopenhauer argued that all art is merely representational and allegorical except for music, which is the closest thing to pure will,’ he told her. ‘But I find in our pentagrams some thing akin to music. Not in its total abstraction from everyday phenomena, but in its ability to pierce through to the center of them. That shining, cloudless plane of truth on which nothing else matters.’”

“Vacations always end.

“It's the very fact that it's finite that makes traveling special. You could move to any one of those destinations you loved in small doses, and it wouldn't be the spellbinding, life-altering seven days you spent there as a guest, letting a place into your heart fully, letting it change you.”

“But this, this is the moment I first think it.

“I am in love with you.

“The thought is terrifying, probably not even true. A dangerous idea to entertain. I release my hold on it, watch it slip away.

“But there are points in the center of my palms that burn, scorched, proof I once held it there.”

"’So I wonder now. I wonder— what does that make us?’

“…I turned and saw him smiling sadly at me through the glass of his helm. ‘What does it mean,’ he said, ‘when the line that once connected us to the inscrutable and ineffable instead coils about, forms a great loop-and then comes back to us?’

“‘This work can never satisfy, Din, for it can never finish. The dead cannot be restored. Vice and bribery will never be totally banished from the cantons. And the drop of corruption that lies within every society shall always persist. The duty of the ludex is not to boldly vanquish it but to manage it. We keep the stain from spreading, yes, but it is never gone.’”

“‘You ask me what I know?’ snapped Ana. ‘I know nothing! I am surrounded by information—data, testimonies, evidence—yet I can draw no firm conclusions at all! I am so vexed by this man’s countless fucking plots that I worry I am his puppet, and I should search the airs about my limbs for strings! For now, we can only consent to be pulled.’”

“‘Get me my damned lyre, Din, or I swear by the emperor’s buttocks, every time you report back to me, my mood shall be blacker and blacker!’”

The same authorial tone that I love (and expect), but the romantic dynamic is grating me a bit — our hero is less impressive and our heroine more sanctimonious, and I don’t find either particularly likable yet.

“‘Come. Let us pretend to be professional, you and I, for hell and the gentry await.’”

I really really really like this book.

“He patted his mechanical sword hilt. ‘A sword don’t do shit against a titan. But for those who make it harder to fight the titans, why, a blade has many uses.’

“We trotted along in silence after that, my own sword feeling heavier at my side—largely because I did not wish to tell the captain my blade was wood and lead.”

“‘It’s tough being a crackler—most don’t live past fifty—but the Empire needs them, and venerates and honors them, and pays them well.’ Another grin. ‘That’s the nature of Khanum, eh? Safety and security for strangeness. Many are willing to make the deal.’”

Really enjoying the world building so far!