# Quote — Justin Cronin, The Ferryman

> And to you, the sleepers in my keeping: you have lived for countless lifetimes, you shall live for countless more. They will be different from the ones you've always known; your days of idleness and ease are gone. This is not a punishment - far from it. It is my gift to you, that you should be redeemed.
>
> I will give you childhood, so that you might know innocence.
>
> Age, so you will know the prize of youth.
>
> Children, so that you will care for the future.
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> Toil, so that you will know the value of a day.
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> The body's failings, so that you will know its worth.
>
> Death, so that you will cherish the bittersweet beauty of life.
>
> We are, each of us, born a sparkling soul, clothed only in our newness; now you will learn to be another.

- Author: [Justin Cronin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/justin-cronin.md)
- Book: [The Ferryman](https://www.leafyquotes.com/justin-cronin/the-ferryman.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Justin_Cronin#The_Ferryman_(2023)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/justin-cronin/the-ferryman/and-to-you

## More from this book

> So, at the last, a confession. I was the one who did it.
>
> Not the Nursery; that was Elise. But the rest of it. The Annex. The drones and watchmen. The splendid houses and grand edifices and endless, temperate days for the privileged few to pass in gentle ease while the unacknowledged masses labored in the shadows of their masters' pleasure. The dream of Prospera may have been Elise's; the design was mine from the start.
>
> Why did I do it? What thought possessed me that I should make one person's happy dream another's ceaseless nightmare? Better to ask: Who, having slumbered centuries in paradise, would willingly awaken to build a life from nothing, to hew it from the rock and ice of an alien world? To the colonists I say: I gave you what you needed, which was a weight to push against. A life you would be glad to leave, and a life to make you ready.
>
> Do you hate me for this? Surely I have earned your loathing. I will not ask you for forgiveness. For such a crime as mine, there can be no pardon, save for God's alone.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/justin-cronin/the-ferryman/so-at-the.md)

> A new sensation swept my body, strange and still. I would know death in this place. What did it mean, to die in a dream? Would it be the same? Would it be a plunge into unbeing, or would I yet find myself passing into some new realm? And the thought came to me that maybe Thea had been right after all, that it was and always would be impossible to know what was dream and what was not; that all creation was boxes within boxes within boxes, each the dream of a different god.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/justin-cronin/the-ferryman/a-new-sensation.md)

> We are indeed such stuff as dreams are made on, our little life rounded with a sleep.
>
> Thus I beam this tale into the cosmos; this message in a bottle, tossed into heaven's waves. Perhaps there is no one to receive it. Perhaps there is but one mind left to listen: the mind behind all things, like a face beneath the painter's canvas. Whoever you are, in whatever form you take - time, matter, light - I ask one thing only: that you leave us as we are. Let us sleep, and dream, and do the work of being human.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/justin-cronin/the-ferryman/we-are-indeed.md)