the breathing sun

❝ These are men, not monsters. ❞

❝ Fuck those men. Fuck them for their shortsightedness. Fuck them for their ingratitude. ❞

❝ We should be cutting your goddamn tongue out for all the lies you’ve told us. ❞

❝ Perhaps my lack of education is showing. ❞

❝ Don’t be sorry. Do your fucking job. ❞

❝ If your friends aren’t capable of protecting themselves, then I argue they aren’t worth protecting. ❞

❝ I think that’s why you’re so frustrated with me… because you know all this, and because you know you are so much more like me than anyone you’ve ever met in your entire life.  ❞

❝ Stop telling me what it is you think I think. You sound fucking ridiculous. ❞

❝ How is it you see such a partner in them and such a villain in me? ❞

❝ Civilization needs its monsters. ❞

❝ I think it worth reminding you that in most cases a person trying to change the world fails for one simple and unavoidable reason… everyone else. ❞

❝ Brace yourself, but I’m the only person within a hundred miles of here who doesn’t want to see you dead. ❞

❝ Stay out of my fucking business. Consider this the only warning you’re ever gonna get. ❞

❝ If we are all going to make something of this place, perhaps it is in everyone’s best interest that you and I find a way past all of this, past your anger towards me. ❞

❝ If you’re anything like me, you simply cannot abide a liar. ❞

❝ There’s a feeling one gets when in the presence of the truly great men. It’s something quite indescribable. ❞

❝ The game you are entering into is a brutal and unforgiving one. ❞

❝ Great men aren’t made great by politics. ❞

❝ If your interests and mine were adverse to each other, there’s a good chance I’d cross you to save myself. ❞

❝ And the moral of the story… everybody needs a partner. ❞

❝ I’m not looking for someone to hold my hand. I need someone who can help me. ❞

❝ Strange pairs… They can achieve the most unexpected things. ❞

❝ When someone gives you a life, it ain’t truly your own. You owe some part of it back. ❞

❝ They can hate me, they just need to need me. ❞

❝ Hold that position for long enough and you might convince everyone you’re something more than you actually are. ❞

❝ This upsets you. This threatens you. I am sorry. There is nothing you can do about it. ❞

❝ It isn’t about getting them to like you, it’s about reminding them how much they dislike each other.  ❞

❝ My concern is for you. ❞

❝ If you are not strong enough to protect yourself, then I am urging you to cease behaving as if you are. ❞

❝ My concern with you is over that which cannot be known. That thing which arises in you when passions are aroused… good sense escapes you. All people have it. But yours… yours is different. Darker. Wilder. When exposed to extremes, I could not imagine what it is capable of. And of greater concern, I’m not sure you do either. ❞

❝ Know that all I have ever wanted for you is to be happy. ❞

❝ No matter where I’ve been, one thing is true. There’s always one. The one you don’t cross. It would seem readily apparent that in this place, that would be you. ❞

❝ Strange. You and I have never shared more than a few words, and yet I feel like we’re old friends. ❞

❝ Every person has their torments. Demons born of past wrongs that hound and harass them. You perceive the effects of the demons. Echoes of their voices. But I know their names. I was there when they were born. I know the things they whisper at night. So you can believe me when I tell you that within the chorus of torments… none of them look or sound like me. ❞

❝ I imagine there are two kinds of men who make their life at sea. Those whose sense of duty forces them to leave any sense of permanence or identity behind them and those for whom that is the attraction. ❞

❝ I think you’re someone who’s very good at managing how you’re perceived. ❞

❝ I think you’re powerless to do anything about this. ❞

❝ I will rain holy hell down upon them. ❞

❝ You have questions about my loyalties? Then accuse me. Challenge me. Fight me. Or shut the fuck up about it. ❞

❝ So you think that they see me as the villain in this particular story? ❞

❝ To pardon a traitor is the act of a coward. ❞

❝ I’ve put a lot of bodies in the ground for you, haven’t I? ❞

❝ People can say what they like about you. But you’re a good person. More people should say that. And someone should be willing to defend it. ❞

❝ It’s clear to me now that what lies ahead is the road to ruin. And I’m asking you to stop this right now before we’ve all gone too far to turn back. ❞

❝ Given a choice between capitulation and survival, I don’t imagine that to be much of a choice for you at all. ❞

❝ I have been the subject of enough ridicule and innuendo to know the difference between a little danger and mortal danger, and I’m telling you that what we face right now is the latter. ❞

❝ I have been loyal and protective and fucking committed to you since that day, and I am asking you to come with me so that I can save your life. ❞

❝ I tried to tell you once, I’m a hard person not to like. ❞

❝ You have proven me so very wrong. And I could not be prouder of you for it. ❞

❝ I think you are fighting for the sake of fighting! Because it’s the only state in which you can function! ❞

❝ Had I two rounds left, I would shoot both of you and be done with all of this. ❞

❝ I’m only sorry that you cannot see past your own pride to join me. ❞

❝ The idea that you could choose to discard our arrangement, that I would demur in the face of your unassailable rhetoric, either you’ve overestimated yourself, or you’ve underestimated me.  ❞

❝ I don’t hide behind the law. I don’t hide behind anything. I look him in his eye and I give him every chance to deny me. That is legitimate. ❞

❝ We aren’t criminals to them. We aren’t even men. We’re animals. ❞

❝ If I’m not what I was when I was born, and I ain’t what I’ve become instead… what the fuck am I? ❞

❝ Where else would you wake up in the morning and matter? ❞

❝ So easy for you to betray your oath? ❞

❝ It isn’t actually the pain they’re inflicting that’s the most frightening part of it. It isn’t the fear of future pain. It’s the knowledge that even when the pain stops, even if they were to let you go, that they’ve changed you. That pain, that fear, that despair… has made you someone else, someone you barely recognize. ❞

❝ I assure you, you will hear from me again. ❞

❝ There is always a life, there is always a future, as long as one is willing to build it for themselves. ❞

❝ I know that any appearance of civility from you is but a glimpse of the person you once were. A ghost that shows itself only while the darker things that now govern your soul lay dormant. ❞

❝ I’m forced to wonder if this illusion is no accident at all, but theater for my benefit, orchestrated by someone so awful, even monsters such as these have no choice but to dance to the tune they play for them. ❞

❝ What happens if that person decides the theater no longer serves his purposes and he lets the monsters loose? ❞

❝ So now I realize two things are possible — One, something has changed within you, something so significant that you’ve turned into someone I barely recognize, or, two… it was a fantasy that I ever knew you at all. ❞

❝ I heard men say it was because of the violence. I heard them say it was your charm. It was clear to me the reason why you were so good at bending men towards your will was you knew the power of a story and how to harness it to your own ends. ❞

❝ I have done what I have done to arrive at this point. I have done what I’ve done and I will live with it. But do not for a moment believe that that defines me. I will not be that person. ❞

❝ Everyone realized, like just about anything else in this life… the moment you stop fearing it, it loses all its power. ❞

❝ It is free today, and so long as I draw breath, it shall remain free. ❞

❝ I’d hoped you and I shared a love to make such a thing unthinkable. I’d hoped those warnings were wrong. But I know you too well, so I prepared in case they were right. ❞

❝ Those people out there heard him and they came to my door not to pay their respects, not because they loved my father… but because when this war begins, they want to make sure I don’t mistake them for enemies. ❞

❝ I cannot stand before you and claim to be without sin. ❞

❝ I feared the person I was about to create. I feared that someone born of such dark things would consume me were I not careful. And I was determined only to wear them for a while and then dispose of them when their purpose was complete. ❞

❝ Truth is… every day I’ve worn that name I’ve hated it a little more. I’ve been ready to return it to the sea for a long time. ❞

❝ What forgiveness are you entitled to while you stand back in the shadows pushing me out in front of the world to be laid bear for the sake of the truth? ❞

❝ Tell me when does the truth about your sins come to light? ❞

❝ You know nothing of my sins. ❞

❝ I want to see this whole goddamn city, this city that you purchased with our misery, burn! ❞

❝ I want to see you hanged on the very gallows you’ve used to hang men for crimes far slighter than this! ❞

❝ I want to see that noose around your neck and I want to pull the fucking lever with my own two hands! ❞

❝ The time for storytelling is past. Now is the time for cold, hard truths. ❞

❝ Is it for my welfare that you want me to leave or your own? ❞

❝ I was clear about what I wanted and I don’t think it had anything to do with begging your forgiveness. ❞

❝ Why did you betray those closest to you all those years ago? Was it really so small and vile as a bribe? The promise of lording over other men in this place? Or were you simply too weak to say no? Too cowardly to do the harder thing and preserve your decency? Tell me it was the latter. Tell me this is all happening because of your cowardice. I could accept that. I might forgive that.❞

❝ Even in this moment, alone with a condemned person, you are unable to speak the truth. ❞

❝ Being that far away, you see things differently. ❞

❝ Every time I said my name, they knew my name. The first thing they said every time was your name. Like we was two halves of the same thing. ❞

❝ I can’t be your wife. But you and I are gonna be partners till they put us in the fucking ground. ❞

❝ Everyone is a monster to someone. Since you are so convinced that I am yours, I will be it. ❞

❝ You are the protector of the law in this place and you brazenly disregard that at your own peril. ❞

❝ For people like us, power in this place is most effective when it is least perceived. ❞

❝ If anyone was going to make a trophy of you, it really ought to be me. ❞

veselin veselinov became the subject of many a song on the street and a poem for children about loving liberty too much. a hero of justice and fairness. 

milen, veselin’s orphaned son that never met him and viktor’s father, grew up an orphan and was a squib and generally skipped by history altogether. his marriage to marva, a ‘foreigner’ and a black woman REALLY made him even more unpopular among many of the durmstrang elite who’d love to profit off hit name.