Robert Jackson Bennett

“You are wrong,” says the man. His voice is low and resonant. The metal walls of the dome, all the knives and swords and spears, all seem to vibrate with each of his words. “Your rulers and their propaganda have sold you this watered-down conceit of war, of a warrior yoked to the whims of civilization. Yet for all their self-professed civility, your rulers will gladly spend a soldier’s life to better aid their posturing, to keep the cost of a crude good low. They will send the children of others off to die and only think upon it later to grandly and loudly memorialize them, lauding their great sacrifice. Civilization is but the adoption of this cowardly method of murder.”

“They have forgotten that war is momentum.War is natural. And war makes one strong.”

“...there is no better time to examine and understand one’s selfhood than when it is dissected and hurtling through darkness.”

“What I'm going to do up here, kid, is tell you a story. Like all stories, it's an attempt to make sense of something larger than itself. And, like most stories, it fails, to a certain degree. It's a gloss, a rendition, so it's not exact. But it'll do. -Silenus”

“Here at the edges, in the cracks and at the crossroads, stepping from shadow to shadow in the river of darkness that runs through the heart of Wink, he feels much more at home.”

“Sometimes I can’t tell if you hate this place or love it.”“I love its potential. I hate its past. And I don’t like what it is.” She hugs her knees close to her chest. “The way you feel about the place you grew up in is a lot like how you feel about your family.”“How’s that?”She thinks about it for a long time. “Like isn’t the same thing as love.”

“And we convict almost every case, she thinks, because the law requires us to prosecute them for living their way of life.”

“No one does. No one really knows how to be happy. You just get close, sometimes. That’s all I want – just to be close.”

“What a tremendous sin impatience is, he thinks. It blinds us to the moment before us, and it is only when that moment has passed that we look back, and see it was full of treasures.”

“I have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could. Say what you like of a belief...of a party...of a finance system..of a power. All I see is privilege and its consequences. States are not in my opinion composed of structures supporting privilege but of structures denying it...in other words deciding who is not invited to the table.”

“Yet I now ask of you—are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?”

“One has no room for vengeance,' says Shara, 'when the eyes of the world are watching. We must be judicious, and bloodless.”

“I have taken many lives in my life. Many children, perhaps husbands, wives, parents. Perhaps it is only just that this same violation was inflicted upon me. Perhaps it is just that one who lives a life of war becomes a refugee from it.”