If There Were 2 Of Me Quotes & Sayings

Continued From Previous Quote
I Wondered if His Interest Had Began When I Tended His Shoulder. I Remembered His Odd Look of Surprise When I Touched Him,as If No One Had Shown Him a Kindness Before. If
Gruz,Finch abd Malich Were Any Indication of His Past. Maybe No-One Had. They Showed a Certain Steely Devotion to One Another.That In No Way Resembled Kindness. And Then There Were Those Scars on His Back. Only Cruel Savages Could Have Delievered That. Yet Somewhere Along The Way,Kaden Had Learned Kindness,Tenderness Even.It Surfaced in Small Actions. He Seemed Like He Was Two Separate People,The Intensely Loyal
Venden Assassin and Someone Else Far Different,Someone He Had Locked Away. A Prisoner Like Me. — Mary E. Pearson

Those cries rose from among the twisted roots
through which the spirits of the damned were slinking
to hide from us. Therefore my Master said:
'If you break off a twig, what you will learn
will drive what you are thinking from your head.'
Puzzled, I raised my hand a bit and slowly
broke off a branchlet from an enormous thorn:
and the great trunk of it cried: 'Why do you break me?'
And after blood had darkened all the bowl
of the wound, it cried again: 'Why do you tear me?
Is there no pity left in any soul?
Men we were, and now we are changed to sticks;
well might your hand have been more merciful
were we no more than souls of lice and ticks.'
As a green branch with one end all aflame
will hiss and sputter sap out of the other
as the air escapes- so from that trunk there came
words and blood together, gout by gout.
Startled, I dropped the branch that I was holding
and stood transfixed by fear, ... — Dante Alighieri