The Stone Sky Quotes
"When we say that 'the world has ended,' remember—it is usually a lie. The planet is just fine."
"No need for guards when you can convince people to collaborate in their own internment."
"So now I will tell you the way that world, Syl Anagist, ended. I will tell you how I ended it, or at least enough of it that it had to start over and rebuild itself from scratch."
"An apocalypse is a relative thing, isn’t it? When the earth shatters, it is a disaster to the life that depends on it—but nothing much to Father Earth."
"Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place."
"We do not resent this, for our opinions and experiences have been carefully constructed, too. We do not understand that what Kelenli has come to give us is a sense of peoplehood."
"One day, if the Earth’s child ever returns..."
"That once, long ago, Father Earth had a child. That child’s loss is what angered him and brought about the Seasons."
"You think of how that momentary contact felt. Familiar vibration-taste of an orogeny which you’ve been quelling since before she was born and training since she was two—but so much sharper and more intense now."
"You’ve been with Castrima for the better part of a year now. Got any friends?"
"Strongbacks who don’t like being human shields can either find a way to distinguish themselves and join another caste, or go join another comm."
"Nobody wants to get caught with their pants down after dark."
"The world isn’t friends and enemies. It’s people who might help you, and people who’ll get in your way."
"They’re feeding us. They’re letting us be useful. It’s a test, you stupid shit."
"The Earth has its own plans for humans."
"I really just wanted to live somewhere nice, live somewhere with … with you."
"You’re my redemption, Nassun. You are all the children I should have loved and protected, even from myself."
"It isn’t right that there’s no end to it."
"We don’t have to be what they made us, Maxixe."
"One person’s normal is another person’s Shattering."
"You can reject these dregs of your old self and pretend that nothing and no one else matters … or you can embrace them."
"Anything, I felt, was better than genocide."
"Guardians keep the tool … and to the degree possible, while still retaining the tool’s usefulness, kill the person."
"Breathing doesn’t always mean living, and maybe … maybe genocide doesn’t always leave bodies."
"What can orogeny do against something like that? Keep her breathing, maybe. But breathing doesn’t always mean living."
"We prevent orogeny from disappearing—because in truth, the people of the world would not survive without it."
"The sapphire ... knows this place," she tries to explain.
"I'm all right," she says. She isn't sure of that, but she says it anyway because she doesn't want him to worry.
"Don't trust the obelisks, little one," he says.
Yes, Schaffa," she promises. "I'll be careful. I won't let them win.
How odd," Schaffa says. "Something alive at last?
"The innermost tier sits in the glass column's blue, gloomy shadow."
"Wealth has no value when the ash falls."
"Normal life in Syl Anagist, we understand, as we walk through it."
"This is normal life in Syl Anagist, we understand, as we walk through it."
"Honor in safety, survival under threat. Necessity is the only law."
"Because she’s been right in every suggestion she’s made thus far."
"When a machine’s sensors are capable of telling you exactly what’s wrong and exactly how to make the whole thing work more efficiently, it’s stupid not to pay heed."
"But for the first time, I think of what life I might want for myself, if I could have a choice."
"The briar patch’s victims have been here for years. Decades."
"Once, after all, I believed I was the finest tool ever created by a great civilization. Now, I have learned that I am a mistake cobbled together by paranoid thieves who were terrified of their own mediocrity."
"The Earth forgets neither those who stabbed it in the back nor those who put the knife in our hand."
"Some things are so broken that they can’t be fixed."
"No one’s talking about that last part yet. First things first."
"The Earth uses them, or their fellow Guardians use them, until they outlive their usefulness and one side or the other kills them."
"The world is broken and you can fix it; that’s what Alabaster and Lerna both charged you to do."
"It’s rare to find one of them who can really go the distance."
"And ask yourself: Even if I could help you save that controlling, sadistic sack of shit that currently passes for your adoptive father figure, why would I? Not even my enemy deserves that fate. No one does."
"You achieve nothing by keeping any of us alive, except cruelty. Put us broken monsters out of our misery, Nassun. The Earth, Schaffa, me, you … all of us."
"To make the whole world as peaceful as Corepoint … would that not be a kindness?"
"Some things are too broken to be fixed, Schaffa."
"I … I can’t make anything better. But I can at least make sure the bad things stop."
"I never saw Kelenli, or her child, again."
"If you have any doubt, I’ll say it plainly now: I am the one who chose the way the world ended."
"It’s as if he doesn’t see the way her eyes drift away while he’s talking."
"The Earth changes only gradually, until it doesn’t."
"The Earth handed out sentences. Here, at least, it was somewhat willing to offer credit for intent and good behavior."
"We were not the only ones who chose to fight back that day."
"You wonder why Tonkee isn’t grimacing the way you are, but Tonkee is only a still."
"It’s faint. It’s slow. And there is a familiar, ugly buzz at the back of your mind when you touch this network."
"Ah, yes. The network you’ve found is Guardians, nearly a thousand of them."
"She cannot have ever accessed the Obelisk Gate before—it’s been yours, till now—but as you observe in shock, in horror, she reaches beyond her spare-key network, finding other obelisks one by one and binding them."
"You have never consciously sought the magic of them before, but for the first time you understand what that buzz is—some part of you, even before Alabaster’s training, felt the foreignness of the magic within them."
"With the onyx’s help, you reach half a planet away and stab the fulcrum of your intention into the wound of the world."
"The onyx listens at your touch, far away above the ashscape of the Stillness. You fall into it, diving desperately into the dark, to make your case."
"And as each of the two hundred and sixteen remaining obelisks in turn submits to her, and as she opens her eyes to stare at the Moon that she’s going to let fly past untouched."
"You look amused. It’s you. It’s truly you. 'Just like that?'"
"It’s been a challenging first forty thousand years."