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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I’m saying there is evil in the world,” Master Kit said, hefting the box on his hip, “and doubt is the weapon that guards against it.Yardem took the box from the old actor's hands and lifted it to the top of the pile."But if you doubt everything," the Tralgu said, "how can anything be justified?""Tentatively. And subject to later examination. It seems to me the better question is whether there's any virtue in committing to a permanent and unexamined certainty. I don't believe we can say that.

I’m saying there is evil in the world,” Master Kit said, hefting the box on his hip, “and doubt is the weapon that guards against it.

I choose not to believe in any gods as an act of charity,” Marcus said. “Charity toward whom?” “Toward the gods. Seems rude to think they couldn’t make a world better than this,

I think the world is often like that.” “Like what?” “Comic, but only at the right distance.

Death, however clearly foretold, still came unexpectedly.

It was only later, in her new, darker rooms above the banking house, that she realized it didn’t matter how loud she screamed or how violently she wept. Her parents would never come to her because, being dead, they didn’t care anymore.

“So how’d you do it? How did you get to where you aren’t scared all the freaking time?”Erin’s smile drooped a little, tired with the effort. “You’re making an assumption,” she said. “Just hang in there. It’ll get easier.” “But not better,” Alexander said. “But not better.

Waiting for a battle was the hardest part. Unless you got a dagger in your gut during the battle. Then that was hardest. Or you got through just fine and saw your men dead around you. Then that was.

Every nation ends and every empire. Every baby born was going to die, given enough time. If being fated for destruction were enough to take the joy out of things, we’d slaughter children fresh from the womb. But we don’t. We wrap them in warm cloth and we sing to them and feed them milk as if it might all go on forever.