Daniel Abraham Quotes & Sayings

The world disappoints us all, and the ways we change our own stories to survive that disappointment are beautiful and tragic and hilarious. — Daniel Abraham

That's one of the things Yardem used to tell me that actually made sense. He said that you don't go through grief like it was a chore to be done. You can't push and get finished quicker. The best you can do is change the way you always do, and the time comes when you aren't the same person who was in pain. — Daniel Abraham

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. — Daniel Abraham

And what's the difference between us, that you'll brush his sins aside and not my own?"
Maati smiled. "You aren't him," he said.
"And you love him."
Maati took a pose of affirmation.
"And love is more important than justice," Seedless said.
"Sometimes. Yes."
Seedless smiled and nodded.
"What a terrible thought," he said. "That love and injustice should be married. — Daniel Abraham

In the thousand years since its foundation, the city had never been taken by force, though twice it had been seduced. — Daniel Abraham

In the past few days, I have stolen a girl from the workhouses by killing her, hauling her body out of the river, and bringing her back to life; worked with an acknowledged mass murderer, no offense - " "None taken." " - to poison and enslave two agents of the law; and performed glorious if intoxicated sexual acts with my dearest friend's lover on a corpse table." "Busy." "It has occurred to me that I may not be a good person." "I have no insight to offer on the question. — Daniel Abraham

And still, all specifics aside, it was a fascinating thought. When something can't be known, when the particulars are lost forever, to look at the events that followed from it, that echoed it, and trace backwards toward the truth. Like seeing the ripples in a pond and knowing where the stone fell in. — Daniel Abraham

Never assume you can survive the future because you've survived the past. Everyone thinks that, and they've all been wrong eventually. — Daniel Abraham

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. — Daniel Abraham

We say our souls want joy, but they don't," she said. "They want what they already know, joyful or not. — Daniel Abraham

She stepped toward him, her hand on his shoulder. He took her fingers in his, kissing her gently without even being aware that he was doing so. Affection was a habit between them, more genuine for being unconsidered. — Daniel Abraham

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

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. — Daniel Abraham

Death, however clearly foretold, still came unexpectedly. — Daniel Abraham

How long can you pretend to be something before you aren't pretending anymore? — Daniel Abraham

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. — Daniel Abraham

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. — Daniel Abraham

Even a man persuaded that the great powers of the heavens loved him above all else could starve. However powerful a story might be, it had its limits, and the brute material world didn't listen or care what priests and bankers told it. — Daniel Abraham

People love their fathers. Their sisters. People love dogs or songs or poems. If I've got to be the champion of something, make it something that doesn't change what it means every time someone says it. — Daniel Abraham

Being doomed doesn't take away from the dignity of the effort, though. — Daniel Abraham

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. — Daniel Abraham

Love is noble," the magistra said. "And so we wrap it around all the things we think perhaps aren't so noble in hopes no one will see what they really are. Fear. Anger. Shame. — Daniel Abraham

We only understand other people by imagining what we would do in their position. What — Daniel Abraham

Has it ever struck you people how arrogant you are?" it asked, huge hands taking an attitude of query that bordered on accusation. "You're talking of slaughtering a nation. Thousands of innocent people destroyed, lands made barren, mountains leveled and the sea pulled up over them like a blanket. And you're feeling sorry for yourself that you had to wring a bird's neck as a boy? How can anyone have feelings that delicate and that numbed both at the same time? — Daniel Abraham

I find that unless we are very, very careful there can be a difference between who we are and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. I — Daniel Abraham

Children are who they are. I may love them all, but I know them too. Their feet are as much clay as my own. It hardly matters what path we've walked to become what we are. Whatever it was, we've walked it. — Daniel Abraham

What had been a shared moment was private now, and always would be. Even if he were to tell the story, it would be a tale told and not the thing itself. The difference between those two was the division between life and death: a lived moment and one entombed. — Daniel Abraham

There are no locks on hell. — Daniel Abraham

In a better world, he thought, I'd have followed that man to hell. — Daniel Abraham

That's the whole world. You. Me. The sea, the sky. Every retching thing there is. It's all a dream the dragons dream, and if the last dragon ever wakes up, we're fu*ked. (pg. 12) — Daniel Abraham

How did you find out?" "I listened. I lied. The normal things anyone would do who wanted to know something hidden. — Daniel Abraham

Words are empty until you fill them, and how you fill them shapes the world. — Daniel Abraham

You have all the time there is between right now and whenever it's too late. — Daniel Abraham

There is great nobility in ordinary people. The world disappoints us all, and the ways we change our own stories to survive that disappointment are beautiful and tragic and hilarious. On balance, I find much more to admire about humanity than to despise. — Daniel Abraham

Words can so often mean what you take from them rather than what was intended. — Daniel Abraham

There's only one utter ending for each of us, and it isn't one we reach toward. Until then, it's the next change, and the next change, and the next. And profound change, even when it's the one you prayed for, is displacing. — Daniel Abraham

Can you love someone you don't trust?"
"Absolutely," he said. "I have a sister I wouldn't lend two copper lengths if I wanted them back. The problem with loving someone you don't trust is finding the right distance. — Daniel Abraham

I've never see God," Yardem said.
"But you believe in him," Master Kit said.
"I'm reserving judgement. — Daniel Abraham

I've never told Liat. About who I am. Do you think ... Maati, can you love someone and not trust them?"

"We're born to odd lives, Otah-kvo," Maati said, sounding suddenly older and more sorrowful. "If we waited for people we trusted, I think we might never love anyone. — Daniel Abraham

It doesn't matter what you've done or seen. Every man's a child until he's a father. It's the way the world's made. — Daniel Abraham

Some errors you can only see once you've committed them. — Daniel Abraham

To lose everything is not the worst that can happen."
"It's starting again, from nothing, with nothing. — Daniel Abraham

Alle dead man are at peace. That's what makes them dead. — Daniel Abraham

Objective truth is difficult to come by, and even if you have it, what you can pass on to the next person is the story that you tell about it. In order for truth to be recognized as true, it has to be wrapped in plausibility. Just the same as lies. (Another Word: Plausibility and Truth — Daniel Abraham

The weapon is poison,' Kit said. 'I believe that the cause we carry it in is just, but that will not protect you. It is not only death to those whose skin it cuts; it holds a deeper violence within it. If you carry it-just that, carry it and nothing more-the poison will still affect you. In time, you will grow ill from it, and eventually, inevitably, it will kill you.'
'It's a sword, Kit,' Marcus said, lifting the green scabbard from it's place. They're all like that. — Daniel Abraham

There is a man named Ovi Niit. He runs a comfort house in the soft quarter. I mean to take it from him. — Daniel Abraham

Over the proof that someone can be both certain and wrong. In my mind, I began to reserve judgment even on the revelations of the goddess. I cultivated the word probably. Was the temple swept? Yes, probably. But perhaps not. The goddess was eternal and just and immune to all lies, probably. We were her beloved and chosen, probably. But perhaps we weren't. I became very aware of the division between truth and certainty. I began to doubt. And once I was on that path, there was no hiding it. — Daniel Abraham

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, — Daniel Abraham

As far as I can tell, life's just one flaming piece of shit after another, except when it's a bunch of them all at once. But — Daniel Abraham

Did we win?" Salan asked as Karol stood. "Hell yes, we did," Karol said, glad that he didn't have to lie to say it. "You just stay there and wait your turn. And don't get impatient. We don't rush the cunning men for pinpricks and scrapes." "Be all right with me if they rushed a little, sir. — Daniel Abraham

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. — Daniel Abraham

Losing everything was still losing everything, however little someone began with. — Daniel Abraham

Sometimes the hand pulls the puppet, sometimes the puppet pulls the hand, but the string runs both ways. — Daniel Abraham

The only ones untouched by the keen madness of the times were the children and the dogs. And the dogs seemed a little nervous. — Daniel Abraham

Every war was the precursor for the wars that followed, a slaughter that justified the slaughters to come. And — Daniel Abraham

We drink to the gods," Amiit said, raising his bowl. "May they never drink to us. — Daniel Abraham

Just because something's a game, doesn't mean it isn't serious. — Daniel Abraham

And may the gods keep us from a world where only the people who deserve love get it. — Daniel Abraham

Possibility is a wide field, dear. "Can't" is a word for small imaginations. — 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. — Daniel Abraham

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. — Daniel Abraham

Danat was asking if we had any other books," Maati said.
"You have all of them," the boy said, awe I'm his voice.
Maati chuckled, and then felt the mirth and simple pleasure fade.
"Yes," he said. "Yes, we have all of them. — Daniel Abraham

I don't know what justice is," she said.
"That's because it isn't the sort of thing you discover. It's a thing you make." She looked at him, and he shrugged. "There are things you find out in the world. Rocks and streams and trees. And there are things you make. Like a house, or a song. It's not that houses and songs aren't real, but you don't just find them in a field someplace and haul them back home with you. They have to be worked at. Made. — Daniel Abraham

things riding mules — Daniel Abraham

Love,' Asa said, 'is like a pigeon shitting over a crowd.'
'How so?'
'Where it lands hasn't got much to do with who deserves it. — Daniel Abraham

I think the world is often like that." "Like what?" "Comic, but only at the right distance. — Daniel Abraham

I'm not drunk," Cithrin said. "You aren't," Yardem agreed. "Then why can't I have another glass?" "Because that's how you stay not drunk. — Daniel Abraham

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. — Daniel Abraham

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

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. — Daniel Abraham

It was the fate of all reforms that they turned against the reformers. — Daniel Abraham