City of Stairs

“The Divine may have created many hells,” he says, “but I think they pale beside what men create for themselves.”

“I have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could.”

“But here, in Bulikov, every piece of history feels lined with razors, and the closer I try and look at it, the more I wound myself.”

“But that which you draw power from, you are also powerless before.”

“373. Shelf C5-163. Edicts of Kolkan, books 783 to 797: fifteen tomes mostly dictating Kolkan’s attitudes on dancing. Total weight: 378 pounds. Not miraculous, but content is definitely dangerous.”
———
“360. Shelf C4-149. Edicts of Kolkan: Books 237 to 243. Seven tomes on how women’s shoes should be prepared, worn, discarded, cleaned, etc.”

Reminds of a few religious laws on our less than ideal planet, doesn’t it?

“Humans are strange, Shara Komayd. They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important—that they are important. You don’t get punished for doing something unimportant, after all. Just look at the Kolkashtanis—they think the whole world was set up to shame and humiliate and punish and tempt them.… It’s all about them, them, them, them! The world is full of bad things, hurtful things, but it’s still all about them! And Kolkan just gave them what they wanted.”
“That’s … madness.”
“No, it’s vanity.”

“If you only drink tea when you work,” says Mulaghesh, “I advise you switch to coffee. I see a lot of work in our future, and coffee packs more punch.”
“Coffee refreshes the body,” says Shara. “Tea refreshes the soul.”

Team Coffee. ‘Nuff said.

The city knows. It remembers. The past is written in its bones, though now the past speaks in silences.

It is a small Saypuri woman, dark-skinned and even smaller than Pitry. She is dressed rather plainly [...]. Pitry finds there is something off about her eyes... The giant's gaze was incredibly, lifelessly still, but this woman's eyes are the precise opposite: huge and soft and dark, like deep wells with many fish swimming in them.
The woman smiles. The smile is neither pleasant nor unpleasant: it is a smile like fine silver plate, used for one occasion and polished and put away once finished.

Time renders all people and all things silent, she thinks. But I will speak of you, of all of you, for all the time I have.

"Why have you done this, my children? Why is the sky wreathed with smoke? Why have you made war in far places, and shed blood in strange lands?

And they said to Her: "You blessed us as Your people, and we rejoiced, and were happy. But we found those who were not Your people, and they would not become Your people, and they were willful and ignorant of You. They would not open their ears to Your songs, or lay Your words upon their tongues. So we dashed them upon the rocks and threw down their houses and shed their blood and scattered them to the winds, and we were right to do so. For we are Your people. We carry Your blessings. We are Yours, and so we are right. Is this not what You said?"

“Life is full of beautiful dangers, dangerous beauties," says Sigrud. He stares into the sky, and the white sunlight glints off his many scars. "They wound us in ways we cannot see: an injury ripples out, like a stone dropped in water, touching moments years into the future.”

“Just because you won the War doesn't mean you can do whatever you like!' says Yaroslav. 'And just because we lost it doesn't mean you can strip us of everything we value!”

She watches the crumbling arches, the leaning, bulky vaults, the tattered spires and the winding streets. She watches the faded tracery on the building facades, the patchwork of tiles on the sagging domes, the soot-stained lunettes, and the warped, cracked windows. She watches the people--short, rag-wrapped, malnourished--stumbling through oblong portals and porticoes, beggars in a city of spectral wonders.

The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope.

“Time renders all people and all things silent. And gods, it seems, are no exception.”

“[She] had never realized until that moment what books meant, the possibility they presented: you could protect them forever, store them up like engineers store water, endless resources of time and knowledge snared in ink, tied down to paper, layered on shelves… Moments made physical, untouchable, perfect, like preserving a dead hornet in crystal, one drop of venom forever hanging from its stinger.”

“The Divine may have created many hells, but I think they pale beside what men create for themselves.”

“If we were only meant for labor, why give us minds, why give us desires? Why can we not be as cattle in the field, or chickens in their coops? … If we are but a possession of the children of the gods, why do the gods allow us to grieve? The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope.”

“Whole countries disappeared. Streets turned to chasms. Temples turned to ash. Stars vanished… In short, a whole way of life—and the history and knowledge of it—died in the blink of an eye.”

“The city knows. It remembers. Its past is written in its bones, though the past now speaks in silences.”

“In Bulikov, every piece of history feels lined with razors, and the closer I try and look at it, the more I wound myself.”

“Columns pierce the gray sky again and again, stabbing it, slashing it. It bleeds soft rain that makes the crumbling building faces glisten and sweat.”

“Your job is to make sure that the past never happens again, that we never see such poverty and powerlessness again. Corruption and inequality are useful things: if they benefit us, we must own them fully.”

“Scars are windows to bitterness—it is best to leave them untouched.”

“The world is a coward… It does not change before your face; it waits until your back is turned, and pounces…”

“Look at them! They’re praying to pain, to punishment! They think that hate is holy, that every part of being human is wrong.”

“Humans are strange. They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important—that they are important. You don’t get punished for doing something unimportant, after all.”

“Namely, I am ashamed that I was asked to be ashamed, that it was expected of me… I am sorrowful that I happened to be born into a world where being disgusted with yourself was what you were supposed to be. I am sorrowful that my fellow countrymen fell that being human is something to repress, something ugly, something nasty.”

“You blessed us as Your people, and we rejoiced, and were happy. But we found those who were not Your people, and they would not become Your people, and they were willful and ignorant of You. They would not open their ears to Your songs, or lay Your words upon their tongues. So we dashed them upon the rocks and threw down their houses and shed their blood and scattered them to the winds, and we were right to do so. For we are Your people. We carry Your blessings. We are Yours, and so we are right. Is this not what You said?”

“Life is full of beautiful dangers, dangerous beauties… The wound us in ways we cannot see: an injury ripples out, like a stone dropped into water, touching moments years into the future.