Daniel Abraham

“To lose everything is not the worst can happen.""It's starting again, from nothing, with nothing," Otah said."Is exactly this," Maj agreed, then a moment later. "Starting again, and doing better.”

“Court games aren't fair. They don't judge men by their worth, and they aren't about what's just. Guilty men can hold power their whole lives and be wept for when they pass. Innocent men can be spent like coins because it's convenient. You don't have to have sinned for them to ruin you. If your destruction is useful to them, you'll be destroyed.”

“We did an evil thing, father.""What do you think war is? We're men. Not boys swinging sticks at each other and pronouncing the evil wizard's defeat. We do what duty and honor demand, and often what we do is terrible.”

“There's ways you can trust an enemy you can't always trust a friend. An enemy's never going to betray your trust.”

“We say that flowers return every spring, but that is a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and untested. The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced. It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of renewal is paid. And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.”

“She shone like the horizon when it is almost too bright to look upon.”

“It's the problem in seeing too much of the world. In loving too much of it. You can only live in one place at a time. And eventually, you pick your spot, and the memories of all the others just become ghosts.”

“Love is like recognition. It's the moment when you catch sight of someone and you think There is someone I have business with in this life. There is someone I was born to know.”

“As we send our armsmen and sailors away to fight and die together; let there be peace between us. If there cannot be peace in the world, at least let it be welcome here.”