Robert Jackson Bennett Quotes & Sayings

Shara was aware throughout that they were playing reversed roles, considering their nationalities: for she was the staunch, mistrustful conservative, zealously advocating the proper way of living and building a disciplined, useful life; and he was the permissive libertine, arguing that if someone wished to do something, and if it hurt no one, and moreover if they had the money to pay for it, then why should anyone interfere? — Robert Jackson Bennett

Every second is a forever in Wink. Every day is a cool afternoon waiting to happen. And every life is one lived quietly, with your feet up and your sun-dappled lawn before you as you watch the world happily drift by. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Historians, I think, should be keepers of truth. We must tell things as they are - honestly, and without subversion. That is the greatest good one can do. — Robert Jackson Bennett

I don't have the time or the energy to hate," says Shara. "I only wish to understand. People are what they are. — Robert Jackson Bennett

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. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Shara was already an avid reader by then, but she had never realized until that moment what books meant, the possibility they presented: you could protect them forever, store them up like engineers store water, endless resources of time and knowledge snared in ink, tied down to paper, layered on shelves ... Moments made physical, untouchable, perfect, like preserving a dead hornet in crystal, one drop of venom forever hanging from its stinger.
She felt overwhelmed. It was
she briefly thinks of herself and Vo, reading together in the library
a lot like being in love for the first time. — Robert Jackson Bennett

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. — Robert Jackson Bennett

The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Just because you won the War doesn't mean you can do whatever you like!' says Yaroslav. 'And just because we lost it doesn't mean you can strip us of everything we value! — Robert Jackson Bennett

Time renders all peope and all things silent. But I will speak of you, of all of you, for all the time I have. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Nations have no morals," says Shara, quoting her aunt from memory. "Only interests. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Wishing is bad," he said again. "It makes you hurt. Makes all the missing parts hurt, makes them open up new and makes them bleed."
xxx
"You take out a part of you," Roosevelt murmured. "Take it out and blow on it and toss it to the winds like dust, and you say, 'Find all the missing parts of me. Go out among the world and find the missing parts of me.' But instead of getting back what you lost you just lose more. Wishing is bad. Wish long enough and there won't be any of you left. — Robert Jackson Bennett

What is a blade but a conduit of death?
What is a life but a conduit of death? — Robert Jackson Bennett

Death is for the weak. — Robert Jackson Bennett

And then it was like there was a split in the world and George could see out of it, and glimpse the endless machinery that kept the world running. And then, for one moment, he could see even more ... — Robert Jackson Bennett

Coffee refreshes the body," says Shara. "Tea refreshes the soul. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Humanity's relationship with the Divine is one of mutual give and take, and we mutually opted to part ways. But this perpetuation - setting up a way of thinking, and just letting it run - it doesn't always yield good results. — Robert Jackson Bennett

But that which you draw power from, you are also powerless before. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Sigrud is a hammer in a world of nails, and he is satisfied knowing only that. — Robert Jackson Bennett

There is no crueler hells then committee work ... — Robert Jackson Bennett

My definition of an adult is someone who lives their life aware they are sharing the world with others. My definition of an adult is someone who knows the world was here before they showed up and that it'll be here well after they walk away from it.

My definition of an adult, in other words, is someone who lives their life with a little fucking perspective. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, yadda yadda yadda. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Having you is different from loving you. — Robert Jackson Bennett

It is not hard to believe that this is the land that birthed the nuclear age: anything feels possible out here. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Scars are windows to bitterness - it is best to leave them untouched. — Robert Jackson Bennett

The woman smiles. The smile is neither pleasant nor unpleasant: it is a smile like fine silver plate, used for one occasion and polished and put away once finished. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Perhaps he can transfer out, he thinks. There are actually many opportunities for a Saypuri here: the Continent is divided into four regions, each of which has its own regional governor; in the next tier below, there are the polis governors, who regulate each major metropolitan area on the Continent; and in the next tier below that are the embassies, which regulate ... well, to be honest, Pitry has never been quite sure what the embassies regulate. Something to do with culture, which seems to involve a lot of parties. — Robert Jackson Bennett

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

Pitry regrets not defining the phrase "other side of the hill" more precisely. As he marches along the wandering paths, it increasingly feels like this hill keeps producing other sides out of nowhere for him, none of which bear any sign of civilization. At — Robert Jackson Bennett

The woods go on and on. Joseph never knew they were so big. But then, he has never really ventured into them before. As a young boy he always wanted to, for what child would turn down an untamed kingdom just beyond his doorstep? But it was drilled into him from the start that his life, like everyone's in Wink, was to be anchored to the streets and sidewalks and well-lit areas, places of sunlight and fresh breeze. The other places, the places in the forest and those hidden in the canyons, well ... those just weren't theirs to have. — Robert Jackson Bennett

There is nothing worse than an opponent who is suddenly revealed to be understanding and compassionate. — Robert Jackson Bennett

So many systems, so many pieces ... more complicated than the most complicated of clocks. I wonder, sometimes: are we truly one thing, one being, or many, many different things, simply dreaming they are one? — Robert Jackson Bennett

No matter what happens, to either of us," says Sigrud, "you have always been a very good friend to m, Shara Komayd. I have known very few good people. But I think that you are one of them. — Robert Jackson Bennett

The sort of people who intermittently review their children, she thinks, rather than raise them. — Robert Jackson Bennett

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. — Robert Jackson Bennett

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? — Robert Jackson Bennett

Deaths of all kinds echo on. And sometimes, it seems, they drown out all of life. — Robert Jackson Bennett

I will not see you, she tells the city, but I will remember you. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Everything, all of it ... it has been a huge mistake. This is what they need of you, isn't it? This is what idealists and visionaries ask of you - to make their mistakes for them. — Robert Jackson Bennett

I have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could. — Robert Jackson Bennett

I learned very early on not to speak to my folk from on high, but to get down with them, beside them, showing them how to act rather than telling them. And I suggested that they should do the same with one another: that they didn't need a book of rules to tell them what to do and what not to do, but experience and action. — Robert Jackson Bennett

She realized she'd been thinking for years that she would not truly be pleased until she'd checked off this last achievement on her list, but one of the dangers of such thinking is that the event one hopes for never quite lives up to the expectation. — Robert Jackson Bennett

If one were to protest all the injustices of life," says Sigrud, "great and small, one would have no time for living. — Robert Jackson Bennett

THERE ARE THOSE WHO COME UPON A CHOICE, A CHANCE, AND TREMBLE AND FEAR - WHY SHOULD I ALLOW THEM IN MY SHADOW? — Robert Jackson Bennett

The ship groans, moans, bangs, and clangs, miserably protesting this turn of events. 'I — Robert Jackson Bennett

O, the things we kill for our dreams, forgetting all the while we shall wake up to find them naught but dust and ash!
What fools we are to pretend that when we walk to war, we do not bring our loved ones with us. — Robert Jackson Bennett

She devoted her life to this place, this work. If that doesn't make a home, Turyin Mulaghesh, then nothing does. — Robert Jackson Bennett

The Divine may have created many hells", he says, "but I think they pale beside what men create for themselves. — Robert Jackson Bennett

I think you're wrong."
"Think what you like. — Robert Jackson Bennett

I put my office right in the middle of the death they threaten us with. [ ... ] here I sit, every day, hanging over all this wasted nothing. I will never forget what the world could be, should my vigilance never fail. And more than that, I will never forget that in a way we are all hanged men and hanged women, awaiting those deaths which cannot be avoided. Yet I will make sure that we live and die the way we choose for as long as we possibly can. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Comes he walking windy-ways, wandering under spruces and through canyons and across shadowy glens, hands in his pockets and head bowed as if all the weight of the world lies teetering on his slumped shoulders. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Shara realizes she herself has done this to her own enemies many times: after all, why kill someone when you can make them out to be an incompetent fool? — Robert Jackson Bennett

There's no such thing as a good death ... It's just a dull, stupid thing we all have to do eventually. To ask meaning of it is to ask meaning of a shadow. — Robert Jackson Bennett

For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must forget it was ever a caterpillar at all. Then it will be as if the caterpillar never was, and there was only ever the butterfly. — Robert Jackson Bennett

You have a talent," says Shara, "for valuing what you feel is right over anything else, including, occasionally, the people around you. You do what you feel is right not because it is satisfying, but because you find any other option to be intolerable. This makes you incredibly frustrating to deal with. But it also means you find solutions where many others would simply give up. — Robert Jackson Bennett

And if we were meant only to labor, why give us minds, why give us desires? Why can we not be as cattle in the field, or chickens in their coops? — Robert Jackson Bennett

George thought about it, and asked, "What are, exactly?"
"What am I?"
"Yes. You're not a performer, or just a performer. I've seen vaudevillians do a lot of things before, but I've never seen one pull reflections off glass. So what are you?"
Silenus smirked, sat back in his seat, and pulled his hat down over his eyes. "You're wrong, kid. I am just a performer. I'm just putting on a show you haven't seen before. — Robert Jackson Bennett

I know vaudeville isn't supposed to be art. It's supposed to be entertainment, which is different. But I think art ... I think it's making something from nothing, basically. It's taking something as simple as movement, or a few notes, or steps, or words, and putting them all together so that they're bigger than what they ever could have been separate. They're transformed. And just witnessing that transformation changes you. It reaches into your insides and moves things around. It's magic, of a sort.
I never really knew that until I saw your act. But when you walked out on that stage, I knew I was seeing something ... different. Something maybe more amazing than what the professor and Silenus had done. You were making something up there, out of just the simplest elements possible, and seeing it changed something in me. I'd never encountered anything like that. — Robert Jackson Bennett

It is quite complicated, being civilised. — Robert Jackson Bennett

These meetings, they're like thieves - they follow you around, wait until you're not looking, and pounce. — Robert Jackson Bennett

If I leave anything behind in this world, I hope it is my work. — Robert Jackson Bennett

One day Nola came into school wearing a set of incredibly thick glasses, and though they did no favors to her appearance, Nola was ecstatic: she could see all kinds of things now, things she'd never known were even there. She'd had no idea trees were so pretty, she said. She could see every single leaf waving in the wind now. For some reason, this terrified young Mona. It wasn't that Nola's vision had changed: it was that her vision had changed without her even knowing it. There were all kinds of things happening around her that she'd never known about, that she was blind to. Though her experience of the world had seemed whole and certain to her, in truth it had been marred, filled with blind spots, and she'd had no idea. — Robert Jackson Bennett

With his right hand Sigrud holds the remains of the ballroom chandelier - which has apparently been ripped out of the ceiling - and he is using it to fend off another attacker, who attempts to engage him with a sword. But though it is hard to tell through all the glimmering crystals flying through the air, the attacker appears to be steadily losing, stumbling back with every blow, in between which Sigrud, using the fist holding the chandelier, manages to pummel the face of the unhappy man in his headlock. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Wink? she thinks. Where the fuck is Wink? — Robert Jackson Bennett

Peace is but the absence of war. War and conflict form the sea through which nation-states swim. Some who have had the fortune to find clear, calm waters believe otherwise. They have forgotten that war is momentum. War is natural. And war makes one strong. — Robert Jackson Bennett

It's a symbiotic relationship: those two excel at being idiots, and I excel at shooting idiots. Everyone gets what they want. — Robert Jackson Bennett

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. — Robert Jackson Bennett

The more you are at sea,' Sigrud explains, 'the more you learn. And the more you learn, the more help and assistance is a troublesome bother. Dealing death, after all, is a solitary affair. — Robert Jackson Bennett

If you wait and watch, she's found, things so often reveal themselves, despite your adversary's best efforts. — Robert Jackson Bennett

It is a fool who lives his life believing the waves upon which he sails shall remember him. The seas know nothing. This makes them beautiful. And this makes them terrible. - DREYLING PROVERB, ORIGIN — Robert Jackson Bennett

You've always believed war to be a grand performance. But to me it's just killing, just the ugliest thing a person can ever do ... So when you need to do it, there's no need to make a show of it. — Robert Jackson Bennett

When I come back to you, if I come back to you, will I know you? Will you be the city of my memory? Or will you be a stranger? — Robert Jackson Bennett

Is this how governments are made? Forcing decisions on wounded people in the middle of the night? — Robert Jackson Bennett

Why is it," says Vohannes as he walks her to the door, "that whenever we finish our business, it feels like neither of us got what we wanted?" "Perhaps we conduct the wrong sort of business. — Robert Jackson Bennett

I am penitent," says Vohannes. "I am penitent for all the relationships this shame has ruined. I am penitent that I've allowed my shame and unhappiness to spread to others. I've fucked men and I've fucked women, Father Kolkan. I have sucked numerous pricks, and I have had my prick sucked my numerous people. I have fucked and been fucked. And it was lovely, really lovely. I had an excellent time doing it, and I would gladly do it again. I really would." He laughs. "I have been lucky enough to find and meet and come to hold beautiful people in my arms - honestly, some beautiful, lovely, brilliant people - and I am filled with regret that my awful self-hate drove them away. — Robert Jackson Bennett

It is nearly two o'clock in the morning, and Tom Bolan is ass-over-head, military-grade, wearing-more-booze-than-he's-ingesting drunk. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Assume nothing, Shara reminds herself. You do not know until you know. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Just because the nightmare you expected comes true, it doesn't make it any less terrifying. — Robert Jackson Bennett

General Turyin Mulaghesh looks like shit. She's obviously still in tremendous shape for a woman her age, but it's been a long while since she bathed, there are rings under her eyes, and the clothes she's been wearing are in desperate need of a wash. This is a far cry from the officer he once knew, the woman whose uniform was so starched you could almost carve wood with the cuffs, the woman whose glance was so bright and piercing you almost wanted to check yourself for bruises after she looked at you. Pitry — Robert Jackson Bennett

Men always forget that human happiness is a disposition of mind and not a condition of circumstances. - John Locke — Robert Jackson Bennett

In retrospect they might have started sleeping together solely out of conversational exhaustion. — Robert Jackson Bennett

It was toward the middle part of their relationship, though neither she nor Vohannes knew it then. She had found him sitting beneath a tree, watching the rowing team practicing in the Khamarda River, next to the academy. The girls' team had just set their shell in the water and was climbing in. When Shara joined him and sat in his lap, as she often did, she felt a soft lump pressing into her lower back. — Robert Jackson Bennett

There is no better time to examine and understand one's selfhood than when it is dissected and hurtling through darkness. — Robert Jackson Bennett

In Shara's estimation, lists form one half of the heart of intelligence, the second half being patience. Most espionage work, after all, is a matter of collecting data and categorizing it: who belongs to which group, and why; where are they now, and how are we sure, and do we have someone else in the region; and now that we have cataloged those groups, what threat level should they be categorized under; and so on, and so on, and so on. — Robert Jackson Bennett

What books meant, the possibility they presented: you could protect them forever, store them up like engineers store water, endless resources of time and knowledge snared in ink, tied down to paper, layered on shelves ... Moments made physical, untouchable, perfect, like preserving a dead hornet in crystal, one drop of venom forever hanging from its stinger. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Shara now sits on committees that decide who shall be nominated to be committee chairs for other committees; then, after these meetings, she sits on committee meetings to formulate agendas for future meetings; and after these, she attends committee meetings deciding who shall be appointed to appoint appointments to committees. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Miracles are just formal requests, Shara thinks wildly. It's like having a form preprinted and filled out and handing it in to get exactly what you want! But you don't always have to do it that way! You can make it up as you go along, so long as you do it right! — Robert Jackson Bennett

Density, matter, radiation ... it's all just construction paper and pipe cleaners and glue, with the proper perspective. — Robert Jackson Bennett

When the auto arrives it's hard to believe there's a functional vehicle underneath all the mud and moss and sprays of gravel, which stick to the sides like barnacles on a ship. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Life is full of beautiful dangers, dangerous beauties ... They wound us in ways we cannot see: an injury ripples out, like a stone dropped in water, touching moments years into the future. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Humans are strange. ... They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important - that they are important. ... it's vanity. — Robert Jackson Bennett

When the world grinds you down, you pick a handful of fires to hold close to your heart. — Robert Jackson Bennett

History, as you may know, is much like a spiral staircase that gives the illusion of going up, but never quite goes anywhere. — Robert Jackson Bennett

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. — Robert Jackson Bennett

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. — Robert Jackson Bennett

They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important - that they are important. You don't get punished for doing something unimportant, after all. — Robert Jackson Bennett

We are - or were - Divinities, Shara Komayd: we drew power from the hearts and minds and beliefs of a people. But that which you draw power from, you are also powerless before ... A people believe in a god ... and the god tells them what to believe. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Up by the fortress was this ... thinadeskite you mentioned?" Mulaghesh grimaces. So much for state secrets. "Yes. — Robert Jackson Bennett

I wished to be an artist," Ivanya confides to Shara. "But it simply didn't turn out that way. I didn't have the ... I'm not sure. The imagination, I suppose, or the ambition, or both. You have to be a bit outside things to make something new, but I was always very much inside things. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Assume nothing. You do not know until you know. — Robert Jackson Bennett