The Eye of the Heron

Nobody had made this wilderness, and there was no evil in it and no good; it simply was.

In the self-important, Falco reflected, there is always room for a little more self-importance.

Why should he remember her? Why should she remember him? She had other things to think about. She was a grown woman. She had to face life. Even if all life had to show her was a locked door, and behind the locked door, no room.

Going was easy. Keep on going was hard.

Armed men don’t sit down and talk.

Easy victories aren’t worth winning.

They had learned how to listen for the sense of the meeting, not the voice of the loudest. They had learned that they must judge each time whether obedience was necessary and right, or misplaced and wrong. They had learned that the act of violence is the act of weakness, and that the spirit’s strength lies in holding fast to the truth.

Indeed, until she had met Lev at school, it had not occurred to her that anyone might prefer to speak a plain fact rather than a lie that sounded well. People said what suited their purposes, when they were serious; and when they weren’t serious, they talked without meaning anything at all.

And the rest, all the rest. All the days and lights and winds and years that would have been, and that would not be, that should be and were not, because he was dead. Shot dead on the road, in the wind, at twenty-one. His mountains unclimbed, never to be climbed.

“Why are you always so full of answers?”

“Because life’s so full of questions.”

If I don’t speak truth I can’t seek truth.

As I refuse violence, I refuse to serve the violent.

She too had lost her luck, and known death, and gone on.

When we’ve agreed that something ought to be done, or not done, we get very stubborn. And when that meets up with another stubbornness, it can make a kind of war, a struggle of ideas, the only kind of war anybody ever wins.