Home > Work > The Burning God (The Poppy War, #3)
41 " Maybe no one was truly a beast. Maybe that was just how murder became possible. You took away someone’s humanity, and then you killed them. "
― R.F. Kuang , The Burning God (The Poppy War, #3)
42 " You’re fond of pretending to be weaklings,” Rin observed. “Does that always work?”“Almost every time. The Mugenese are terribly attracted to easy targets.” “And they never catch on?” “Not as far as I’ve noticed. See, they’re bullies. Weakness is what they want to see. They’re so convinced that we’re just base, cowardly animals, they won’t stop to question it. They don’t want to believe we can fight back, so they won’t. "
43 " If you sanction it, you'll horrify them. If you denounce it, they'll resent you. But if you keep quiet, you get plausible deniability. "
44 " take what you want, I'll hate you for it. But I'll love you forever. I can’t help but love you.Ruin me, ruin us, and I’ll let you. "
45 " War didn't end, not so cleanly — it just kept building up in little hurts that piled on one another until they exploded afresh into raw new wounds. "
46 " It's as if - you know how when you're ill for a long time, you forget how it feels to be healthy? You get used to your head ringing, your ears being blocked, or your nose being stuffed - and you don't even notice you're not right anymore. Until you are. "
47 " She’d loved him like a father once. He’d taught her everything he’d known. He’d led her to the Pantheon. Then he’d abandoned her, returned to her, betrayed her, and saved her. He’d let so many others die—he’d let her people die—but he had saved her. What the fuck was she supposed to do with a legacy like that? "
48 " This life you've chosen, you won't get many moments like this again. But it's the nights like this that keep you alive. All you think about is who you're fighting against. But that? That's what you're fighting for. "
49 " You can’t do this for me, he said. I won’t let you.It’s not for you. It’s not a favor. It’s the cruelest thing I could do "
50 " But theirs had always been a broken country. It had never been unified, not truly; it had only ever been held tightly together by steel and blood, a facade of internal unity, while factions always threated to split from within. Rin had forced those tensions to the surface, and then to their breaking point. She'd forced the Nikara to confront the greatest lie it had ever told about itself — that there had been a united Nikara Empire at all. "
51 " Tonight was a borrowed grace, innocent of the future. They sat in miserable and desperate silence, wishing and regretting while the bloody moon traced its ponderous path across the sky. "
52 " That's your key to the gods. Hold that in your mind and never forget the way you're feeling right now. That's what gives you power. And that's what is going to keep you human. "
53 " Underdogs can often find a way out, but not always. Particularly not if the side with the upper hand has anticipated, as well as is possible given the information at hand, everything could go wrong. "
54 " Rin knew he was right. The fault lay with her teaching. She just didn’t know how to explain things more clearly than she had. She wished she still had Chaghan with her, who knew the cosmos and its mysteries so well that he could easily break it into concepts they could understand. She wished she had Daji or even the Sorqan Sira, who could implant a vision in their minds that would shatter their conceptions of real or not real. She needed some way to break the logic in their brains like Jiang had done to her, but she had no idea how to replicate his yearlong syllabus, much less condense it down to two weeks. "
55 " She'd been so stupid to once think that if she ended the Federation then she'd ended the hurting. War didn't end, not so cleanly- it just kept building up in little hurts that piled on one another until they exploded afresh into raw new wounds "
56 " You don’t fix hurts by pretending they never happened. You treat them like infected wounds. You dig deep with a burning knife and gouge out the rotten flesh and then, maybe, you have a chance to heal. "
57 " I needed you—Altan needed you—and all you did was, was—” Jiang spoke so quietly she almost couldn’t hear him. “I couldn’t save Altan.” Her voice broke. “But you could have saved me.” He looked stricken. For once he had no quippy retort, no excuse or deflection. "
58 " No one would lift a weapon. No one would fight or flee. Just this night, just this moment, they had entered a liminal space where their past and future did not matter, where they could be the children they used to be. "
59 " But what if someone could erase all memories of what she'd done?No more guilt. No more nightmares. She wouldn't have flaring pockets in her memory like gaping wounds that hurt to touch. She wouldn't hear screams when she tried to sleep. She wouldn't see bodies burning everytime she closed her eyes.Maybe that was the coward's haven. But she'd want it, too. "
60 " Does it hurt?" she asked."Knowing what I've done? Yes, it hurts. Unlike anything you could ever imagine. "