Finch

They’ll never forget, never forgive, no matter who the enemy is, son. Better just to start a new life. Be someone else.

Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?

Strange, but when he closed his eyes he had an image of the hotel above them restored to its former grandeur. A concierge and porter in the lobby. Someone behind the desk waiting to take his key. Sintra in an evening gown. They’d be about to take a motored vehicle to the opera. The streets would be busy with merchants and people coming home from work. The buildings, the storefronts, would be bright and cheery with lights. Like it had been in those mayfly beautiful moments between wars, before the Rising.

It looked like lively abstract art. Symbols in search of context.

Maybe once, early on, he had convinced himself he could do some good, sometimes even imagined he was a mole, getting close so he could strike a blow. Imagined he was in it to defend Ambergris from the enemies that surrounded it. Imagined he was protecting ordinary citizens.

But the truth was he’d been tired, had stopped caring. Broken down from too much fighting, too many things connected to his past. And when that spark, that impulse, had returned, it was too late: he was trapped.

But the fact is I don’t care. I haven’t cared since I came here, and I will continue not to care until I leave. With as much of Ambergris smoldering behind me as I can manage.

I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.

When they give you things, ask yourself why. When you're grateful to them for giving you the things you should have anyway, ask yourself why.