The Obelisk Gate Quotes
"After all, a person is herself, and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one’s being. I am me, and you."
"Nassun, who is just eight years old when the world ends."
"There is no knowing what went through little Nassun’s mind when she came home to find her younger brother dead on the den floor."
"Destroying mountains is as easy as an orogene toddler’s temper tantrum. Destroying a people takes only a bit more effort."
"Now it’s just how one knows a lorist: by the lips, and by the stack of polymer tablets they carry, and by the shabby clothes they tend to wear."
"Somewhere I heard of, where they can help you. Make her a little girl again, and not…"
"If you wish to live, that can be arranged."
"You have a good soul. I’ll help you all I can."
"Don’t be fooled. The Guardians are much, much older than Old Sanze, and they do not work for us."
"The reverberation of Alabaster’s orogeny is carelessly powerful, diamond-precise, and so achingly familiar."
"You look back at the man—and your gaze catches on Lerna, who’s looking at the frozen bug in fascination."
"The hot points of the insects sess like geothermal vents as you step forward and focus your sessapinae."
"You begin slowly, using your eyes as well as your sessapinae to determine exactly where to stop… but Alabaster has shown you the way of it."
"Everyone stares at you. You look at Ykka. You’re breathing hard because that degree of fine focus is much, much harder than shifting a hillside."
"Ykka’s stone eater takes a slow step closer. You sess her movement, rather than seeing it; it’s like a mountain shifting toward you."
"The shock of understanding rings through you like silence. Alabaster can’t do orogeny anymore."
"So what are you planning to do about it?"
"It’s the winter that really kills, during Seasons."
"Nassun’s out of your reach. Your goals have changed; now you’re here to survive, same as the rest of us."
"It is unfathomable that any sensible civilization would be so wasteful as fill prime storage caverns with corpses!"
"A dilemma: You are made of so many people you do not wish to be. Including me."
"But you know so little of me. I will attempt to explain the context of me, if not the detail."
"I was not always. For a very long time, I was one of the vengeful ones… but what it keeps coming back to is this: Life cannot exist without the Earth."
"So this is a confession, my Essun. I’ve betrayed you already and I will do it again."
"‘Satellite’ just means an object whose motion and position are dependent on another."
"We’re going to stop manipulating stone now, Essun. That stuff you see in me? That’s what you have to learn to control."
"The word doesn’t matter, Essun. Make one up if you like. You just need to know the stuff exists."
"I don’t believe it, though, that we’ve always had Seasons."
"Much later, though, she will remember an instant after that touch, when the tips of the man’s fingers glimmered like the cut ends of the harpoon."
"In the moment it is no matter. Their journey has ended. Nassun is, apparently, home."
"The Guardians do not speak of Warrant, where they are made. No one knows its location. When asked, they only smile."
"You’re in line to pick up your household’s share for the week when you hear the first whisper."
"Breathe not the fine ashfall. Drink not the red water. Walk not long upon warm soil."
"Seek the orogene in its crib. Watch for the center of the circle. There you will find [obscured]"
"Seek the retrograde [obscured] in the southern sky. When it grows larger, [obscured]"
"Him again. I wish he hadn’t done so much to you."
"The next morning, at Found Moon, she says to Schaffa, 'I need to learn how to hide what I am better.'"
"Something causes a fear like that, Nassun."
"You serve a higher purpose, little one."
"I will kill him if he ever hurts you, Nassun."
"What does any living thing want, facing an enemy so cruel?"
"We’ve spent centuries making fun of the astronomests for their crackpot theories."
"Everyone in the Stillness is like this."
"I destroy three of them on the first day after I leave you."
"You should imagine me as what I truly am among my kind, then: old, and powerful, and greatly feared."
"Not all of us are content with that. Such a rare thing, the birth of a new one of our kind. We wear on endlessly, while you rise and spawn and wilt like mushrooms. It’s hard not to envy. Or covet."
"You were wrong. The people of the Fulcrum, and the Guardians, are not to blame for the things they do. You wanted to know why your Guardian must suffer as he does. The answer is: He doesn’t have to."
"I can’t speak for my kind any more than you can for yours. And I had more important things to do."
"Why me, Hoa? There’s nothing special about me. There must be other orogenes with the potential to access the obelisks. Earthfires, Nassun—"
"There’s only one way to stop one of us."
"It means that then Schaffa can be her father. He is in every way that matters already."
"You wanted to know why your Guardian must suffer as he does. The answer is: He doesn’t have to."
"What happened here was inevitable, I suppose."
"They want to make sure the Obelisk Gate is never opened again."
"He wants to make sure the Obelisk Gate is never opened again."
"If you fight his master, then you fight my enemy, too. It will make us… allies."
"We can fight because of the way Castrima’s built," Ykka adds.
"I don’t want to remember what they’re capable of doing to you."
"I just—I know what they’re capable of, sweetening. You wouldn’t understand. I needed to protect you."
"Something has rewritten the story of his orogene children in Jija’s head—a story that is as chiseled and unchangeable as stone in Nassun’s mind."
"Uche never lost control like that; Mama wouldn’t have let him."
"I learned how to make things happen with the silver, and how to take things out of people."
"At least Uche didn’t have time to hate."
"You should have had us with someone stronger."
"Stone your heart against roggas, for there is nothing but rust in their souls!"
"The one you call Gray Man doesn’t want to prevent the opening of the Gate,"
"Rusty son of a cannibal, I will beat you bloody if you—"
"Don’t rust it up, Essun. Innon and I didn’t love you for nothing."
"But if you stay, no part of this comm gets to decide that any other part of this comm is expendable. No voting on who gets to be people."
"Pissed off the wrong rogga, Hoa said of his own incarceration. Yes, these enemy stone eaters rusting did."
"SNAP and you break lattices and magic strands and reseal them to your own design."
"Bullies are bullies. So simple to twist the flickering silver between their cells until those cells grow still, solid. Stone."
"To wield the power of this network of obelisks without a focus is to become its focus, and die."
"The Gate is like orogeny, you see. Without conscious control, it responds to all desires as if they are the desire to destroy the world."
"You look for Gray Man, the stone eater who hurt Hoa, but he is not among the mountains that threaten your home."
"Some flee north. Unacceptable, and distance is nothing for you now."
"And as your body sags and lists to one side because something suddenly throws off your balance, hands take hold of you and pull you upright."
Rest, Essun," says the one you love. "I’ll take care of you.
"Your stone hand is shaped into a fist. There’s a crack across the back of it, perpendicular to the hand bones. Even as the magic reshaped you, you fought."
"You fall into my arms, and I take you to a safe place."
"Fools. That’s what you get for pissing off my rogga."
"I lay you in a bed and make certain there is food and water nearby."
"You didn’t, uh. Her arm. Not without her permission."
"Why do you stay with her? Are you just… hungry? I love her, of course."
"The Moon’s coming back, Nassun. It was lost so long ago, flung away like a ball on a paddle-string—but the string has drawn it back."
"Nettie Lonesome had two things in the world that were worth a sweet goddamn: her old boots and her one-eyed mule, Blue."
"The last fourteen years of Nettie’s life had passed in a shriveled corner of Durango territory."
"She expected the stick to break against his shirt like the time she’d seen a buggy bash apart against the general store during a twister. But the twig sunk right in like a hot knife in butter."
"Mustangs were wild things captured by thoughtless men, roped and branded and beaten until their heads hung low."
"But Nettie could feel the wildness inside their hearts, beating under skin that quivered under the flat of her palm."
"She didn’t break a horse; she gentled it."
"And until someone touched her with that same kindness, she would continue to shy away, to bare her teeth and lower her head."