2
" Desist! I have never been one to delight in religion, but even my ignorance knows that the practice of holiness means to improve human nature. This is not religion, but carnal indulgence. To drink, and to fornicate, mocking the state, as it calls you...when enemies bang on the gates, will you sing, and imbibe, and make love while they slaughter? To love, instead of to fight? For the power of flowers, ridiculous garlands you weave in your hair will not save you. The making of love won't protect you from war, from a bloody and terrible war. To have peace would be wonderful. Peace at all costs is submission, is slavery, shame worse than death. "
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low , Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous
19
" When she asked him why he'd shot her daddy, he just shrugged and said that he'd been planning on shooting six people when he rode into town. She looked up at him, eyes wide, batting her eyelashes, feigning awe, looking on him the way that Joshua must have looked on the walls of Jericho, and asked him why six; and he said back to her: because his pistol had six bullets in it. With another shrug, as though that answered everything. And then he turned to face her, with his livid scar and gap teeth and breath that stank like the devil and hell, and the words flashed sudden through her mind, clear as if they'd been laid out on parchment: this is what the face of a free man looks like. "
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low , Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous