Home > Work > The Burning God (The Poppy War, #3)
61 " Shut up,” Riga said, and slapped her again. Then again, and again, until a vivid crimson handprint bloomed on Daji’s paper-white cheek. “Shut up, you fucking whore. "
― R.F. Kuang , The Burning God (The Poppy War, #3)
62 " Elites with entrenched interests will always hate you," Daji said. "That's inevitable. But the elites don't matter, the masses do. What you have to do is shroud yourself in myth. Your enemies' deaths become part of your legend. Eventually you will become so far removed from reality that right and wrong don't apply to you. Your identity becomes part and parcel of the idea of the nation itself. They'll love you no matter what you do. "
63 " So what happens when we die?” Jiang raised an eyebrow. “I think you can answer that.” She mulled over this for a moment. “We go back to the world of spirit. We—we leave the illusion. We wake up.” Jiang nodded. “We don’t die so much as we return to the void. We dissolve. We lose our ego. We change from being just one thing to becoming everything. Most of us, at least. "
64 " They want to erase us. It's their divine mandate. They want to make us better, to improve us, by turning us into a mirror of themselves "
65 " It wasn’t about surrender. It was about the long game. It was about survival. "
66 " For it was wonderful to remember that this land could still be so breathtakingly beautiful, that there was more sewn into the heart of the Twelve Provinces than blood and steel and dirt. That centuries of warfare later, this country was still a canvas for the gods, that their celestial essence still seeped through the cracks between worlds. "
67 " That’s cute,” she said with as much calm as she could manage. "
68 " It wasn't just the freedom of range, the permission to destroy without constraint. Everything felt so easy. She wasn't calling the flame, she was the flame [...] "
69 " Do it. Take what you want, it said, 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. "