Home > Author > Christopher Ruocchio
1 " The practiced ear could hear the calculation behind every word like fishhooks in the mind. "
― Christopher Ruocchio , Empire of Silence (Sun Eater, #1)
2 " It is a mistake to believe we must know a thing to be influenced by it. It is a mistake to believe the thing must even be real. "
3 " My memory is to the world as a drawing is to the photograph. Imperfect. More perfect. We remember what we must, what we choose to, because it is more beautiful and real than the truth. "
4 " Always forward, always down, and never left or right. "
― Christopher Ruocchio , Howling Dark (Sun Eater, #2)
5 " But the ugliness of the world does not fade, and fear and grief are not made less by time. We are only made stronger. We can only float together on their tides, as otters do, hand in hand. "
6 " Sad is like a big ocean, and you can’t breathe deep down. You can float on it, you can swim a little, but be careful. Grief is drowning. Grief is deep water. "
7 " The man who hopes for the future delays its arrival, and the man who dreads it summons it to his door. "
8 " Atrocity is writ by quiet men in council chambers over crystal glasses of cool water. Strange little men with ashes in their hearts. Sans passion, sans hope… sans everything. Everything but fear. "
9 " As the ancient sea was cruel, so too is that blacker sea, vaster by far, that fills the void between the suns like water. "
10 " The world’s soft the way the ocean is. Ask any sailor what I mean. But even when it is at its most violent, Hadrian . . . focus on the beauty of it. The ugliness of the world will come at you from all sides. There’s no avoiding it. All the schooling in the universe won’t stop that. "
11 " Augustine once said that if there are such things as the past and the future, they do not exist as such but are only the present in their own times. The past, he says, exists only in memory and the future only in expectation. Neither is real. "
12 " But the truth is poor poetry "
13 " You cannot lead as a tyrant. The people under you will not let you. To lead is a kind of service, a duty you owe to those who follow. "
― Christopher Ruocchio , Demon in White (Sun Eater, #3)
14 " Men are slower to act from principle than self-interest, and far slower to act on principle than jealousy or revenge. "
15 " Civilization is a kind of prayer: that by right action we might bring to pass the peace and quiet that is the ardent desire of every decent heart. "
16 " Focus blurs, Gibson used to say. Focus blinds. You must take in all of a thing by seeing the totality of it, not by focusing on minutiae. This is as important for a ruler as it is for a painter. "
17 " Great is Truth, and mighty above all things. "
18 " The worlds have enough of tyrants, enough of murderers and genocides. "
19 " It was ironic that the same people who had enacted nuclear war on the Homeworld, who presided over the refugee camps and rotted the ecosphere, had balked in the face of blood sport. Would they call us barbarians, those men of ancient days? "
20 " A single death, wrote one ancient king, is a tragedy, but a genocide can only be understood through statistics. "
