5
" There seldom is a single wave. Another way to look at it is, 'when it rains, it pours.' Good luck or bad luck often followed by more of the same. Whatever path you begin, it's almost impossible to change your direction. You're sent hurtling through space, crashing through experiences decided by the first few decisions you ever made. Binary choices set against something as simple as a yes or no in your earliest stages of development. As a Future Child, that would be your primitive choices in Genus. Actions, friendships, whether to smile in one moment or frown in the next. Those are all paths that, once set upon, are entirely unchangeable. At least, that's what I was designed to think. "
― Brandon R. Chinn , Third Trial (The Kognition Cycle #3)
14
" When we know that it's a planet just like this one, only with a better climate and worse people--when we know they're all propertarians, and fight wars, and make laws, and eat while other starve, and anyhow are all getting older and having bad luck and getting rheumatic knees and corns on their toes just like people there...when we know all that, why does it still look so happy--as if life there must be happy?..." ... " If you can see the whole thing," he said, " it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives....But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the art is, is to see it as the moon. They way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death. "
19
" All the luck in the world has to come every year, in every part of every year, or there is not a harvest and then the luck, the bad luck will come and everything we are, all that we can ever be, all the Einsteins and babies and love and hate, all the joy and sadness and sex and wanting and liking and disliking, all the soft summer breezes on cheeks and first snowflakes, all the Van Goghs and Rembrandts and Mozarts and Mahlers and Thomas Jeffersons and Lincolns and Ghandis and Jesus Christs, all the Cleopatras and lovemaking and riches and achievements and progress, all of that, every single damn thing that we are or ever will be is dependent on six inches of topsoil and the fact that the rain comes when it's needed and does not come when it is not needed; everything, every...single...thing comes with that luck. "
― Gary Paulsen , Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass
