sweetflute reads

“It wounded him to think his race, his species, his world was being defeated with such apparent ease. What was worse, what he could not endure was the suspicion that it all meant nothing, that the process of their annihilation was something quite mechanical: that mankind’s destroyers were not, in other words, fighting a war but merely spraying the garden.”

“The sky is the curving arch of heaven, the airy realm of wind and space….We march through seasons set by the pace of the sun, and measure the length of a month by the phases of its sister, the moon.”

“All of them monsters together.”

“The heart is pleased by one thing after another.”

“‘At every moment you should ask “What now is lacking?” and work at some acceptance of your current reality. This is sanity. This is life. You have to imagine your life from here on out.’”

“Who would speak of these things when we were gone? …I began to wish that I could pour our memories into the water we carried, so that anyone drinking might see how it had been.”

“And it felt like getting away with something to lie up in the trees at night, unmarked yet close enough to hear the cameleers’ campfire snap, and discern from their muted talk a few of the old words that still tugged at my memory — fellow, father, God — all spoke in a rhythm so familiar it felt like trying to remember a dream.”

“‘As long as they’re in chaos, we’re in danger.’”

“‘All poetry is a call to action.’”

“And so the ka watch us, and they ask, who knows Ka? Who spends time with Ka, and learns Ka, and likes to touch Ka, and walks around on Ka, and lets Ka seep into them, and leaves the dust in their rooms alone? Those are the humans we’re going to talk to.”

“But nothing lasts, not even stone, not even despair.”

“‘I suppose it’s this that makes me somehow happy. Have we ever been so free of choices? The past is wiped out, all that matters is now. The present and the future. And the future is this field of stones, and here we are….You never really summon all of your strength until you know that there’s no way back, no way to go but onward.’”

“‘Someone has to show what you mean when you talk about a different life, John Boone. Someone has to live the life.’”

“‘History is not evolution! It is a false analogy! Evolution is a matter of environment and chance, acting over millions of years. History is a matter of environment and choice, acting within lifetimes, and sometimes within years….So that if we choose to establish certain institutions…there they will be! And if we choose to establish others, there they will be!’”