Illumur

I ask to be made beautiful like the trees are beautiful, each growing according to a unique plan. Lop off a limb and and the tree will accommodate it's loss, still growing and still beautiful. It is my hope to be able to flourish in a similar fashion, taking on the shape and dimensions that is intended for me.

There's a whole vanload from Harry's church group going to Seattle, and I'm a little shocked to find Stoner Richard crammed into the back. "Hey, Cody," he says. "Hey, Richard," I reply. "Didn't take you for a -" "A Christian?" He laughs. "I'm just in it for the paint fumes. I'm all out of weed." One of the girls in the middle seat throws a paint roller at him. "Shut up, Richard. You are so full of shit." Cursing, stoner, do-gooding Christians. Okaayy.

Ben is off to the side, looking down the hill. I follow his gaze to the rocket ship, and at the same time, we turn to look at each other. I don't quite know how so much gets communicated into one look, but it does. Complicated and confused in a wholly fucked up way is a good way to describe it. But maybe that's just how love is.

"Do you want to come inside?" I ask. "Sleep for a while?" He shakes his head. "Maybe later."  The sun is up, and the early morning mist has burned off. I reach for his hand. "Come on." "Where are we going?" "For a walk. I want to show you around. There's a crazy rocket ship at the park where the view goes on forever." I interlace my fingers with his, and we take off walking. Toward my past. Into my future.

He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken. Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway. It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.

Sometimes, son," my father said, prying my fingers free, "you have to help the heroes along.

If you give up what you want most for what you think you should want more, you'll end up miserable.

To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.

I swear, my dear. Sometimes our conversations remind me of a broken sword." She raised an eyebrow. "Sharp as hell," Lightsong said, "but lacking a point.

"Good men don't become legends," he said quietly. "Good men don't need to become legends." She opened her eyes, looking up at him. "They just do what's right anyway.

A man can only lead when others accept him as their leader, and he has only as much authority as his subjects give to him. All of the brilliant ideas in the world cannot save your kingdom if no one will listen to them.

Sometimes the prize is not worth the costs. The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself.

By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer's greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry...

Future years will never know the seething hell and the infernal background of the countless minor scenes and interiors . . . and it is best they should not - the real war will never get in the books.

The war with its defeats and uncertainties is immensely better than what we lately called integrity of the Republic, as amputation is better than cancer.

A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."

War is at best barbarism. . . . Its glory is all moonshine. . . . War is hell.