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.

...there is no better time to examine and understand one__ selfhood than when it is dissected and hurtling through darkness.

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.

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. __our 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__ 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.

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.

Yet I now ask of you__re 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?

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?

I will not see you, she tells the city, but I will remember you.

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.

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.

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!

The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope.

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.

I think you're wrong.""Think what you like.

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.

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

Envy the fire, for it is either going or not. Fires do not feel happy, sad, angry. They burn, or they do not burn.