N. K. Jemisin

Peace is meaningless without freedom.

Mother always said that if one must do something unpleasant, one should do it wholeheartedly and not waste effort on regret.

That was the way of things, after all. Children had to grow up. They did not always become what others wanted.

Sky’s forecourt had been designed by my late sister, Kurue, who had understood two key elements of the mortal psyche: they hate being reminded of their own insignificance, yet they simultaneously and instinctively expect their leaders to be overwhelmingly dominant.

It is a massive palace, each spire of which could house a village; its chambers contain dozens of entertainments. All of these become tedious to the point of torment after two thousand years. Hells, after twenty.

It takes great strength to compromise, Shahar. More than it does to threaten and destroy, since you must fight your own pride as well as the enemy.

“They follow the creed of the Bright: that which disturbs the order of society must be eliminated, regardless of whether it caused the disturbance.” She rolled her eyes. “You’d think they’d get tired of parroting Itempas and start thinking for themselves after two thousand years.”

It’s all right to need help. All of us have things we can’t do alone.

“You can’t lose faith you never had to begin with.”

“Ah. So you never believed in the Bright at all?”

“Of course I believed. Even now I believe, in principle. But when I was sixteen, I saw the hypocrisy in all the things the priests had taught me. It’s all very well to say the world values reason and compassion and justice, but if nothing in reality reflects those words, they’re meaningless.”

There was no point in making myself suffer unnecessarily. As a mortal, there would be pain enough in my life, whether I sought it out or not.

I...regret...what I did. It was wrong. Very wrong. But regret is meaningless.

This was what I’d asked her to give me. I had no right to complain just because it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.