Seth Kaplan > Recent Status Updates

“You have no responsibility to live up to anyone else’s expectations. You have only to live up to your own expectations.”

Wizard’s Ninth Rule: A contradiction cannot exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole. To believe in a contradiction is to abdicate your belief in the existence of the world around you and the nature of things in it, to instead embrace any random impulse the strike your fancy - to imagine something is real simply because you with it were.

“Truth can be a burden, but secrets are poison.”

“You should never judge the sides of an argument simply by who is doing arguing.”

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”

“…the seeds of the past bear fruit in the present.”

“Once you’ve got a task to do, it’s better to do it than to live with the fear of it.”

130 pages of exposition and world building until this really started to tell its story. This is pretty dark so far. Taking a brief break since the book is too big to carry on a flight.

Part II returns to strategic machinations, backstabbing and political intrigue. Much more interesting reading than Part I.

Thus far this is one long set of ego trips and overly repetitive descriptions of war. I’ll give this a bit longer but I’m not sure I’m going to make it all the way through this novel.

Loving this so far especially in the context of KSR’s Mars trilogy, with this exploring some of the same themes. But also enjoying so much “old tech” as this was written in 1984 so still references concepts such as Xeroxing, which made me laugh.

“The Dog and the Dragon” seems to be a particularly meaningful chapter. “You will be warm again.”

A slow burn that is really starting to take off. Have to take a quick break because the book is too big to bring with me on trip.

“Fear holds us and bonds us and keeps us from growing… It kills a small piece of us each day. It holds us to what we know and keeps us from what’s possible, and it is our worst enemy… The brave man is not the one without fear but the one who does what he must despite being afraid.”

Finally rounding into the homestretch of this wonderful tome.

“Sometimes, a hypocrite is nothing more than a man who is in the process of changing.”

“All things exist in three realms…
The Physical: what you are now.
The Cognitive: what you see yourself as being
The Spiritual: the perfect you, the person beyond pain, and error, and uncertainty.”

Loving this so far. Taking a break to read Edgedancer.

Finally got a hold of this so pausing my reading of Oathbringer to fill in the gap.

“…We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.”

“Every one of us is losing something precious to us… lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making reference cards…” (continued)

“Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all.”

“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”

“A theory is a battlefield in your head.”

“Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness is a story.”

“In dreams begin responsibilities.”

“In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion.”

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions.”

Wizard’s Eighth Rule - Talga Vassternich

“Right and wrong are not the product of consensus… Rational moral choices are based on the value of life, not a consensus… If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand other men are for it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no amount of popular outcry should stay you from your course.”

“If, hoping to appease it, you willingly compromise with unrepentant evil, you only allow such evil to sink its fangs into you; from that day on its venom will course through your veins until it finally kills you.”

“In matters of morality or truth, there can be no compromise.”

“We do not fight for land. We are loyal to an ideal - an ideal of liberty wherever man lives… We don’t fight because we love violence. We fight for our freedom as individuals to live our own lives, to pursue our own survival, our own happiness.”

“Evil grants no mercy, and to attempt to appease it is nothing more than a piecemeal surrender to it. Surrender to evil is slavery at best, death at worst.”

Just finished Part One and in classic Williams fashion, I’m still less than halfway through the book. So far this is a wonderful return to Osten Ard and I’m really enjoying getting to explore this world more.

Taking a break to read a new non-fiction book that I just got.