The void is my friend.
“People like that,” Saladin mumbled, “people who have only ever believed that they are superior merely by existing, that they are owed things they did not earn and can take what they want, they will never admit defeat. People like Duarte are incapable of accepting defeat.”
page 109
He snatched the clipboard up, a smile spreading across his face–one of his rare genuine smiles, which chased the mordant glint from his eyes. It was in that moment that I realized two thing: one, I had done magic; and two I was beginning to have feelings for Havelock Renard. I had no idea which was more upsetting and incomprehensible.
page 192
The sound of the Gion Shoja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the colour of the sala flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.
From the Heike Monogatari, translated by Helen Craig McCullough, epigraph of this book
“Would you really like to remember all the things you’ve lost?” R asked.
page 82
I told him the truth. “I don’t know. Because I don’t even know what it is I should be remembering. What’s gone is gone completely. I have no seeds inside me, waiting to sprout again. I have to make do with a hollow heart full of holes. That’s why I’m jealous of your heart, one that offers some resistance, that is tantalizingly transparent and yet not, that seems to change as the light shines on it at different angles.”
She wants to say, what you’re missing is that I’ve been happy. What you’re missing is that for the first time in years I don’t feel like a disease waiting to be happy or a problem to be solved until I’m back in the now, until she and I are apart.
page 44, from the short story named Madeleine