Rhythm Of War Quotes

This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth.

Journey before destination, you bastard.

It will,” Wit said, “but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again.

Our weakness doesn’t make us weak. Our weakness makes us strong. For we had to carry it all these years.

Some people charged toward the goal, running for all they had. Others stumbled. But it wasn't the speed that mattered. It was the direction they were going.

Who do you think is stronger?” Adolin asked. “The man who has walked easily his entire life, or the man with no legs? The man who must pull himself by his arms?

No one ever accomplished anything by being content with who they were, Shallan,” Adolin said. “We accomplish great things by reaching toward who we could become.” “As long as it’s what you want to become. Not what someone else thinks you should become.

You just want to stop existing,” Kaladin said. “You don’t want to actually kill yourself, not on most days. But you figure it sure would be convenient if you weren’t around anymore.

Kaladin’s anxiety began to subside, and he pushed through the worst of the darkness. He always emerged on the other side. Why was that so difficult to remember while in the middle of it?

Heroism is a myth you tell idealistic young people—specifically when you want them to go bleed for you.

You don't have to smile. You don't have to talk. But if you're going to be miserable, you might as well do it with friends.

That’s because Wit is an asshole,

If we can choose, we can change. If we can't change, then choice means nothing. I'm glad I feel this way, to remind me that I haven't always felt the same. Been the same.

Why do we fight, Kal? Why do we keep going?” “I don’t know,” Kaladin whispered. “I’ve forgotten.” “It’s so we can be with each other.” “They all die, Tien. Everyone dies.” “So they do, don’t they?” “That means it doesn’t matter,” Kaladin said. “None of it matters.” “See, that’s the wrong way of looking at it.” Tien held him tighter. “Since we all go to the same place in the end, the moments we spent with each other are the only things that do matter. The times we helped each other.

DON'T SPOIL STORIES!

Adolin is right,” Veil said. “He’s always been right about you. Tell me. Who is the strongest of mind? The woman whose emotions are always on her side? Or the woman whose own thoughts betray her? You have fought this fight every day of your life, Shallan. And you are not weak.

I know what you are,” Shallan whispered. “You’re the blankness upon my memories. The part of me that looks away. The part of my mind that protects me from my past.” “Of course I am,” Veil said. “I’m your veil, Shallan.

Honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men!

I don’t struggle with feelings of insecurity any longer.” “Good.” “I’d say I’m pretty good at them.

I’m not strong enough,” Kaladin whispered. “You’re strong enough for me.” “I’m not good enough.” “You’re good enough for me.” “I wasn’t there.” Tien smiled. “You are here for me, Kal. You’re here for all of us.

WATCH, the Rider said. YOU WANTED TO KNOW WHAT WAS BEYOND THE NEXT HILL. SEE THEM ALL.

You're always willing to give others more charity than you extend yourself.

We need both heart and mind," Lirin said. "The heart might provide the purpose, but the head provides the method, the path. Passion is nothing without a plan. Wanting something doesn't make it happen.

His entire life had been a futile effort to stop a storm by yelling at it. The storm didn't care.

I know how you feel. Dark, like there's never been light in the world. Like everything in you is a void, and you wish you could just feel something. Anything. Pain would at least tell you you're alive. Instead you feel nothing. And you wonder, how can a man breathe, but already be dead?

Fine,” Navani said. “I hope when you die—knowing your homeland is doomed, your families enslaved, your queen executed—you feel satisfied knowing that at least you maintained a slight market advantage.

History is like that, always gobbling up the present.

When good men disobeyed, it was time to look at your orders.

You need someone to talk to, Noril, when the darkness is strong. Someone to remind you the world hasn’t always been this way; that it won’t always be this way.

But why do you care? What does it matter?" "You're my only Bridgeboy," Adolin said with a grin. "Where would I get another?

Few men have the wisdom to realize when they need help. Fewer still have the strength to go get it.

I am an artist,” Wit said. “I should thank you not to demean me by insisting my art must be trying to accomplish something. In fact, you shouldn’t enjoy art. You should simply admit that it exists, then move on. Anything else is patronizing.

I accept that there will be those I cannot protect.

Aladar's axehounds had puppies. I had no idea how much I needed to see puppies until I flew by them this morning. They are the grossest things on the planet, Kaladin. They're somehow so gross that they're cute. So cute I could have died! Except I can't, because I'm an eternal sliver of God himself, and we have standards about things like that.

My turn now. The story of one of my insanities. For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes-- and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable. What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints, old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children's books, old operas, silly old songs, the naive rhythms of country rimes. I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents; I used to believe in every kind of magic. I invented colors for the vowels! A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green. I made rules for the form and movement of every consonant, and I boasted of inventing, with rhythms from within me, a kind of poetry that all the senses, sooner or later, would recognize. And I alone would be its translator. I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

Radiant,” he said. “How? How do you still fight?” “The same way you do,” Kaladin said. “One day at a time, always taking the next step.

No army, no matter how clean its reputation, walked away from war untainted. And no leader, no matter how noble, could help but sink into the crem when he stepped into the game of conquest.

Run. Flee. I'll chase you. I will never stop. I am eternal. I am the storm.

Was he happy? He wasn’t sad. For now, he’d accept “not sad.

Deal with your own stupid planet, you idiot. Don’t make me come over there and slap you around again.

I doubt any dragon ever had it so good anyway.

Extinction is the natural escalation of this war,” Leshwi whispered. “If you forget why you are fighting, then victory itself becomes the goal.

Strength before weakness. He was coming to understand that part of his first oath. He had discovered weakness in himself, but that wasn't something to be ashamed of. Because of that weakness, he could help in ways nobody could.

That night, it rained on the other dogs, who slept outside in the cold barn, which leaked. But the little dog snuggled into a warm bed beside the fire, hugged by the farmer’s children, his belly full. And as he did, the dog sadly thought to himself, ‘I could not become a dragon. I am an utter and complete failure.’ The end.

Our weakness doesn't make us weak. Our weakness makes us strong, for we've had to carry it all these years.

It was a nice dream, wasn't it, Syl?" he asked. "That we could escape? Find peace at long last?" "Such a wonderful dream," she whispered.

Yet the misery did lessen around others, and it required Kaladin to keep up a semblance. To pretend. It might be a front, but he'd found that sometimes the front worked even on himself.

Do try to focus.” “Well, I do try. I simply fail.

For the men chatting together softly, the change was in being shown sunlight again. In being reminded that the darkness DID pass. But perhaps most important, the change was in not merely knowing that you weren't alone — but in FEELING it. Realizing that no matter how isolated you thought you were, no matter how often your brain told you terrible things, there WERE others who understood.

I know. I’m sorry.” Adolin grimaced. “I’m not explaining it well. I just … I don’t think Shallan is as weak as you say. Weakness doesn’t make someone weak, you see. It’s the opposite.

Who is a better swimmer?” Veil whispered. “It’s the sailor who has swum his entire life, even if he encounters rough seas that challenge him. Who is the stronger man? It is the man who must pull himself by his arms.

What I wanted was a connection, a shared heartbeat that kept rhythm across oceans and worlds. Not some alliance cobbled out of war. I didn’t want the prince from the folktales or some milk-skinned, honey-eyed youth who said his greetings and proclaimed his love in the same breath. I wanted a love thick with time, as inscrutable as if a lathe had carved it from night and as familiar as the marrow in my bones. I wanted the impossible, which made it that much easier to push out of my mind.

Love can’t change the realities of our situation.” “No, but it can change people.

War is the last option of the state that has failed,

If there is a god, then I think we could find him in the way we care about one another.

Science was all about lines, about imposing order on chaos. Navani reveled in her careful preparations, without anyone to tease her for keeping her charts so neat or for refusing to skip any steps.

No man can judge another man’s heart or trials, for no man can truly know them.

You should have been the surgeon Adolin," Kaladin said. "Not me. You care about people." "Don't be silly," Adolin said, pulling open the door as he gestured at Kaladin's work clothing. "I could never dress like that." He left Kaladin with a wink.

What did you do the moment you found out?" Mraize said. "Cursed your name.

If you spend your life knocking people down, you eventually find they won't stand up for you.

Maybe I'm my own brand of wrong.

Do not deny your own talents simply because you envy another's.

This is life, and I will not lie to you saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that's a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: you will be warm again.

When we live without listening to the timing of things, when we live and work in twenty-four-hour shifts without rest – we are on war time, mobilized for battle. Yes, we are strong and capable people, we can work without stopping, faster and faster, electric lights making artificial day so the whole machine can labor without ceasing. But remember: No living thing lives like this. There are greater rhythms, seasons and hormonal cycles and sunsets and moonrises and great movements of seas and stars. We are part of the creation story, subject to all its laws and rhythms.

You were supposed to be different. You-" "Why?" Dalinar asked, standing calmly. "Why what?" Kaladin snapped. "Why am I different?" "Because you don't throw us away!" Kaladin shouted. "Because you... because..." Because you care about your men.

Sense, Odium. The only kind I have is nonsense. Well, and some cents, but cents are nonsense here too—so we can ignore them. Scents are mine aplenty, and you never cared for the ones I present. So instead, the sense that matters is the sense Dalinar sensibly sent you.

But sir, do you know why I get up each day?” Lirin shook his head. “It’s hard sometimes,” Noril said, stirring. “Coming awake means leaving the nothingness, you know? Remembering the pain. But then I think, ‘Well, he gets up.’” “You mean Kaladin?” Lirin asked. “Yes, sir,” Noril said. “He’s got the emptiness, bad as I do. I can see it in him. We all can. But he gets up anyway. We’re trapped in here, and we all want to do something to help. We can’t, but somehow he can. “And you know, I’ve listened to ardents talk. I’ve been poked and prodded. I’ve been stuck in the dark. None of that worked as well as knowing this one thing, sir. He still gets up. He still fights. So I figure … I figure I can too.” (less)

there was a God, if the Almighty was still out there somewhere, had he created Moash? Why? Why bring such a thing into the world?

I could not become a dragon. I am an utter and complete failure.

More wars are lost to lack of information than are lost to lack of courage.

I'm sorry, Father," Kaladin said. "Sorry? For... for what?" "I thought your way might be correct," Kaladin said. "And that I'd been wrong. But I don't think it's that simple. I think we're both correct. For us.

and he pushed through the worst of the darkness. He always emerged on the other side. Why was that so difficult to remember while in the middle of it?

Never underestimate the simple intimidating force of a man who won't back down.

One must find rhythms others’ ears don’t hear.

It is his ultimate lie, Son of Honor. The lie that says you have no choice. The lie that there is no more journey worth taking.

Wit dropped his bloody handkerchief before Ruthar. “How remarkable,” he said. “If you spend your life knocking people down, you eventually find they won’t stand up for you. There’s poetry in that, don’t you think, you storming personification of a cancerous anal discharge?

He didn't like it when people used the word "stupid" for the way he was. People called one another stupid when they made mistakes. Dabbid wasn't a mistake. He could make mistakes. Then he was stupid. But not always. He couldn't think fast like others. But that made him different, not stupid. Stupid was a choice.

Perhaps the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts – between individuals in economic life, between groups in politics, between creeds in religion, between states in war. This is the more dramatic side of history; it captures the eye of the historian and the interest of the reader. But if we turn from that Mississippi of strife, hot with hate and dark with blood, to look upon the banks of the stream, we find quieter but more inspiring scenes: women rearing children, men building homes, peasants drawing food from the soil, artisans making the conveniences of life, statesmen sometimes organizing peace instead of war, teachers forming savages into citizens, musicians taming our hearts with harmony and rhythm, scientists patiently accumulating knowledge, philosophers groping for truth, saints suggesting the wisdom of love. History has been too often a picture of the bloody stream. The history of civilization is a record of what happened on the banks.

Adolin might claim he was a different from his father, but in fact they were two shades of the same paint. Often, two similar colors clashed worse than wildly different ones would.

Our weakness makes us strong. For we had to carry it all these years.

Do not dismiss your own talents because you envy those of another.

Eventually Dalinar had done what any good commander did when faced by such persistent mass insubordination: He backed down. When good men disobeyed, it was time to look at your orders.

It is difficult not to question your value to someone who seems to value nothing. Sincerity might not come easily for you, but when she finds it in you, she’ll value it even more for the scarcity.

There was always an excuse for why Kaladin needed the spear again, wasn't there? This was what he'd been afraid of. This was what made him tremble. The worry that he would never be able to put it down.

At the age of nineteen, Gordievsky took up cross-country running. Something about the solitary nature of the sport appealed to him, the rhythm of intense exertion over a long period, in private competition with himself, testing his own limits.

I go to the gods,” Rock said. He held up his finger. “There is one who lives here. One afah’liki. He is powerful god, but tricky. You should not have lost his flute.” “I … don’t think Wit is a god, Rock.

It won’t be like that for me,” Kaladin said. “You told me it would get worse.” “It will,” Wit said, “but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again.

how often has "hope" been the reason someone refuses to move on and accept a realistic attitude? How often has "hope" caused more pain or delayed healing? How often has "hope" prevented someone from standing up and doing what needs to be done, because they cling to a wish for everything to be different?

You. Cannot. Have. My. SACRIFICE!

It wouldn't be polite for me to interrupt," Notum said. "Please continue your insane rant.

This is not a topic for gentlemen to discuss," he said with an airy tone. "I'm neither gentle nor a man," Veil said.

I am unchained." AND YET, YOU THINK SO OFTEN OF KALADIN. "I am ... mostly unchained.

That which we allow to exist, to flourish freely according to its own rhythms, is superior to anything our little hands create.

small glass chicken on the windowsill

Some people charged toward the goal, running for all they had. Others stumbled. But it wasn’t the speed that mattered. It was the direction they were going.

Now he reduced his progress to the rhythm of his boots -- he walked across the land until he came to the sea. Everything that impeded him had to be outweighed, even if only by a fraction, by all that drove him on. In one pan of the scales, his wound, thirst, the blister, tiredness, the heat, the aching in his feet and legs, the Stukas, the distance, the Channel; in the other, I'll wait for you, and the memory of when she had said it, which he had come to treat like a sacred site. Also, the fear of capture. His most sensual memories -- their few minutes in the library, the kiss in Whitehall -- was bleached colorless through overuse. He knew by heart certain passages from her letters, he had revisited their tussle with the vase by the fountain, he remembered the warmth from her arm at the dinner when the twins went missing. These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality. But these heresies died when he read her last letter. He touched his breast pocket. It was a kind of genuflection. Still there. Here was something new on the scales. That he could be cleared had all the simplicity of love. Merely tasting the possibility reminded him of how much had narrowed and died. His taste for life, no less, all the old ambitions and pleasures. The prospect was of rebirth, a triumphant return.

Nothing changed, in the aftermath of loss. Songs kept getting written. Books kept getting read. Wars didn't stop....Life renewed itself, over and over, without sympathy. Time surged on in its usual rhythms, those comings and goings, beginnings and ends, sensible progressions that fixed things in place, without a thought to the whistling in the woods on the outskirts of town....

Still, a fling couldn’t hurt, right?” Veil said. She nodded her chin toward one of the passing barmaids, a tall young woman with unusually light hair. “What about Hem over there? She’s tall.” “Great. Tall,” Kaladin said. “Because we both measure roughly the same in inches, we’re sure to get along. Think of all the tall-person topics of conversation we could engage in. Like … Hmm…

Every form of human conflict may be reduced to precisely the same pattern of mental events. We are all totalitarian despots over our own thoughts, bound to keep our minds in complete control. Control requires security. Security demands war. All war is the macrocosmic residue of neural synapses struggling to maintain their rhythm.

How remarkable,” he said. “If you spend your life knocking people down, you eventually find they won’t stand up for you. There’s poetry in that, don’t you think, you storming personification of a cancerous anal discharge?

I figure the Blackthorn has studied every military text known to man,” he said. “And we could do worse for a general than the person who likely read ’em to him. Particularly if she’s willing to listen to a little sense. That’s more than I can say for some highlords I’ve followed.

Your words make sense up here," Kaladin said, tapping his head. "But not down here." He slapped his breast. "That's always been your problem, son. Letting your heart override your head." "My head can't be trusted sometimes," Kaladin said.

Like a rockbud, humans were. Soft at first, but capable of gripping onto the stone and growing into something practically immovable.

It's hard sometimes," Noril said, stirring. "Coming awake means leaving the nothingness, you know? Remembering the pain. But then I think, 'Well, he gets up'.

You. Cannot. Have. My. SACRIFICE!” she shouted. “Mine. My sacrifice. Not yours.” She pointed at the crowd. “Not theirs.” She pointed at Adolin. “Not his. Mine. MY SACRIFICE.

When I’m at my worst, I feel like I can’t change. Like I’ve never changed. That I’ve always felt this way, and always will.

A little? Adolin dear, I'm a little weird. This place is downright bizarre!

That’s the trouble with science. It’s never done. Always upending itself. Ruining perfect systems for the little inconvenience of them being wrong.

Journey before destination you bastard.

I'm not strong enough, I've never been strong enough. You know better than I what your limits are, Wit said. It's not such a terrible thing, to be too weak. Makes us need one another.

He's got the emptiness, bad as I do. I can see it in him. We all can. But he gets up anyway. We're trapped in here, and we all want to do something to help. We can't, but somehow he can.

The baking thing is an actual tradition,” Wit added. “I once visited a place where—if you lose a battle—your mother has to bake the other fellow something tasty. I rather liked those people.” “Pity you didn’t remain with them longer,” Dalinar said. “Ha! Well, I didn’t think it wise to stay around. After all, they were cannibals.

That’s stupid. The story is really long. He needs to hear the ending so he’ll know it’s worth listening all the way.” “That’s not how this works,” Wit said. “It needs drama. Suspense. Surprise.” “Surprises are dumb,” she said. “He should be informed if a product is good or not before being asked to commit. Would you like a similar surprise at the market? Oh, you can’t buy a specific food. You have to carry a sack home, cut it open, then find out what you bought. Drama. Suspense!” Wit gave Kaladin a beleaguered look. “I have bonded,” he said, “a literal monster.

Tell me. Who is the strongest of mind? The woman whose emotions are always on her side? Or the woman whose own thoughts betray her? You have fought this fight every day of your life, Shallan. And you are not weak.

By asking questions rather than thinking for the audience, we invite them to join us as a partner and think for themselves. If we approach an argument as a war, there will be winners and losers. If we see it more as a dance, we can begin to choreograph a way forward. By considering the strongest version of an opponent’s perspective and limiting our responses to our few best steps, we have a better chance of finding a rhythm.

What happened next? I retain nothing from those terrible minutes except indistinct memories which flash into my mind with sudden brutality, like apparitions, among bursts and scenes and visions that are scarcely imaginable. It is difficult even to even to try to remember moments during which nothing is considered, foreseen, or understood, when there is nothing under a steel helmet but an astonishingly empty head and a pair of eyes which translate nothing more than would the eyes of an animal facing mortal danger. There is nothing but the rhythm of explosions, more or less distant, more or less violent, and the cries of madmen, to be classified later, according to the outcome of the battle, as the cries of heroes or of murderers. And there are the cries of the wounded, of the agonizingly dying, shrieking as they stare at a part of their body reduced to pulp, the cries of men touched by the shock of battle before everybody else, who run in any and every direction, howling like banshees. There are the tragic, unbelievable visions, which carry from one moment of nausea to another: guts splattered across the rubble and sprayed from one dying man to another; tightly riveted machines ripped like the belly of a cow which has just been sliced open, flaming and groaning; trees broken into tiny fragments; gaping windows pouring out torrents of billowing dust, dispersing into oblivion all that remains of a comfortable parlor...

Tien,” Kaladin said. “Why did you do it? You should have stayed safe.” Tien turned to him, then smiled. “They would have been alone. They needed someone to help them feel brave.” “They were slaughtered,” Kaladin said. “So were you.” “So it was good someone was there, to help them not feel so alone as it happened.” “You were terrified. I saw your eyes.” “Of course I was.” Tien looked at him as the charge began, and the enemy advanced up the hillside. “Who wouldn’t be afraid? Doesn’t change that I needed to be here. For them.

But perhaps most important, the change was in not merely knowing that you weren’t alone—but in feeling it. Realizing that no matter how isolated you thought you were, no matter how often your brain told you terrible things, there were others who understood. It wouldn’t fix everything. But it was a start.

What I Will by Suheir Hammad I will not dance to your war drum. I will not lend my soul nor my bones to your war drum. I will not dance to your beating. I know that beat. It is lifeless. I know intimately that skin you are hitting. It was alive once hunted stolen stretched. I will not dance to your drummed up war. I will not pop spin break for you. I will not hate for you or even hate you. I will not kill for you. Especially I will not die for you. I will not mourn the dead with murder nor suicide. I will not side with you nor dance to bombs because everyone else is dancing. Everyone can be wrong. Life is a right not collateral or casual. I will not forget where I come from. I will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved near and our chanting will be dancing. Our humming will be drumming. I will not be played. I will not lend my name nor my rhythm to your beat. I will dance and resist and dance and persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than death. Your war drum ain’t louder than this breath.

…it was during a period he had so much time on his hands that he felt that time had stopped. How could time have stopped? ‘Because,’ he said, ‘and you will understand this when you are older, sometimes you feel that everything around you has come to an end. You feel that you are completely alone, that time is frozen and that you are invisible. At first, you might feel exhilarated by the sense of freedom, but then you’ll be frightened that you are lost and you will never be able to go back.’ He explained that when he first felt this, he had been isolated and afraid and had prised open his watch case to verify that time was indeed passing. The rhythm of the watch might have been imagined. Sound was not enough, he needed to see and touch it. It was the first time that he had dismantled a mechanism. The turning wheels, ticking each second away, had reassured him. It was then that he had comprehended the importance of time.

A voice from the dark called out, "The poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar imagination of disaster. Peace, not only the absence of war." But peace, like a poem, is not there ahead of itself, can't be imagined before it is made, can't be known except in the words of its making, grammar of justice, syntax of mutual aid. A feeling towards it, dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have until we begin to utter its metaphors, learning them as we speak. A line of peace might appear if we restructured the sentence our lives are making, revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power, questioned our needs, allowed long pauses. . . . A cadence of peace might balance its weight on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence, an energy field more intense than war, might pulse then, stanza by stanza into the world, each act of living one of its words, each word a vibration of light--facets of the forming crystal.

Heroism is a myth you tell idealistic young people—specifically when you want them to go bleed for you. It got one of my sons killed and another taken from me. You can keep your heroism and return to me the lives of those wasted on foolish conflicts.

You told me it would get worse.” “It will,” Wit said, “but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again.

As there was nothing left for Veil to protect Shallan from feeling, she began to fade. But as she faded, one last question surfaced: Did I do well?

I can't decide if I'm glad to be old enough to wish my world a fond farewell, or if I envy the young lads who get to explore this world.

You don't know what you're saying," Ua'pam said. "And that might just be why Maya and I are able to do things you think impossible.

The enemy thinks he's won. But I want to see his face when he realizes the truth. Don't you? It's going to be delightful.

That's the trouble with science. Always upending itself. Ruining perfect systems for the little inconvenience of them being wrong.

Since we all go to the same place in the end, the moments we spent with each other are the only things that do matter.

In fact, you shouldn’t enjoy art. You should simply admit that it exists, then move on. Anything else is patronizing.

Love, you’re deliciously weird sometimes.” “The rest of the time, I’m just tastelessly weird.” She held up the carafe. “Drink. It’s for science.

What was a god who only made demands? Nothing but a tyrant with a different name.

If we slow down, Jasnah said, the past catches up to us. History is like that, always gobbling up the present.

Time. It was a sadistic master. It made adults of children—then gleefully, relentlessly, stole away everything it had given.

After their duels, after going through all those forms of breath and magic, they knew the rhythm of each other’s body too well to pretend otherwise. They swayed and they glided and she led him into a twirl, feeling the heat of his tall, strong frame even after she spun away, entranced by it every time she came back to him. They moved together like water and moonlight.

Love is not a perfect melody that only happens when all the right notes and rhythms present themselves. Love is a war song, a battle cry. Something to fight for. And I would fight for us.

A group of people in black robes stood around her, each holding a brightly shining diamond broam in one palm. She blinked at the sharp light. Their hoods looked a fair bit more comfortable than her sack. Each robe was embroidered with the Double Eye of the Almighty, and Shallan had a fleeting thought, wondering at the seamstress they’d hired to do all this work. What had they told her? “Yes, we want twenty identical, mysterious robes, sewn with ancient arcane symbols. They’re for … parties.

It is spectacular,” his mother said. “Though I’m a little more stunned to hear you referring to Brightness Navani Kholin by her first name. Isn’t she queen of this tower?” Kaladin shrugged. “I’ve grown more informal with them as I’ve gotten to know them.” “He’s lying,” Syl said in a conspiratorial tone from where she sat on Hesina’s shoulder. “He’s always talked like that. Kaladin called King Elhokar by his name for ages before becoming a Radiant.” “Disrespectful of lighteyed authority,” Hesina said, “and generally inclined to do whatever he wants, regardless of social class or traditions. Where in Roshar did he get it?” She glanced at Kaladin’s father, who stood by the wall inspecting the lines of strata. (less)

A family,” he said with a grunt. “Never had one of those before.” “I knew it,” she said softly. “What? That I was lonely?” “No,” she said solemnly, “that you were the child of a couple of particularly ugly rocks.” He glared at her. “You know,” she said, “since you have no family. Must be rocks. It makes sense.” “Really? We were having a moment.” She smiled, putting her hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Vathah. I appreciate your sediment.” She got up to go. “Hey,” Vathah said as she walked away. She glanced back at him. “Thanks for smiling.

Captain Copeland picked up the intercom mike and addressed the Roberts’s crew. That he was speaking for himself struck Ens. Jack Moore as unusual and urgent. Normally seaman Jack Roberts was the public address voice of his namesake warship. His southern drawl was all but unintelligible to anyone not acquainted with Dixie’s rhythms and diphthongs. But the skipper’s diction was as crisp as a litigator’s. He was talking fast and sounding more than a little nervous. “A large Japanese fleet has been contacted. They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and a number of destroyers. “This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.

How remarkable," [Wit] said. "If you spend your life knocking people down, you eventually find they won't stand up for you. There's poetry in that, don't you think, you storming personification of a cancerous anal discharge?

In any case, maybe we should let Kal show us on to the prepared rooms. He’s obviously excited.” “How can you tell?” Syl asked. “I don’t think he ever gets excited. Not even when I tell him I have a fun surprise for him.” “Your surprises,” Kaladin said, “are never fun.” “I put a rat in his boot,” Syl whispered. “It took me forever. I can’t lift something so heavy, so I had to lead it with food.” “Why in the Stormfather’s name,” Lirin said, “would you put a rat in his boot?” “Because it fit so well!” Syl said. “How can you not see how great the idea was?” “Lirin surgically removed his sense of humor,” Hesina said. “Got good money for it on the open market too,” Lirin said. Hesina leaned in close to Syl. “He replaced it with a clock, which he uses to monitor exactly how much time everyone else wastes with their silly emotions.” (less)

But you can’t be amazed at the convergent examples of domestication across the cosmere. You can’t know any of this, because you live on a giant ball of rock full of slime where everything is wet and cold all the time. This is a dog, Kaladin. They’re fluffy and loyal and wonderful.

Throughout the biblical story, from Genesis to Revelation, every radical challenge from the biblical God is both asserted and then subverted by its receiving communities— be they earliest Israelites or latest Christians. That pattern of assertion-and-subversion, that rhythm of expansion-and-contraction, is like the systole-and-diastole cycle of the human heart. In other words, the heartbeat of the Christian Bible is a recurrent cardiac cycle in which the asserted radicality of God’s nonviolent distributive justice is subverted by the normalcy of civilization’s violent retributive justice. And, of course, the most profound annulment is that both assertion and subversion are attributed to the same God or the same Christ. Think of this example. In the Bible, prophets are those who speak for God. On one hand, the prophets Isaiah and Micah agree on this as God’s vision: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, / and their spears into pruning hooks; / nation shall not lift up sword against nation, / neither shall they learn war any more” (Isa. 2:4 = Mic. 4:3). On the other hand, the prophet Joel suggests the opposite vision: “Beat your plowshares into swords, / and your pruning hooks into spears; / let the weakling say, ‘I am a warrior’” (3:10). Is this simply an example of assertion-and-subversion between prophets, or between God’s radicality and civilization’s normalcy? That proposal might also answer how, as noted in Chapter 1, Jesus the Christ of the Sermon on the Mount preferred loving enemies and praying for persecutors while Jesus the Christ of the book of Revelation preferred killing enemies and slaughtering persecutors. It is not that Jesus the Christ changed his mind, but that in standard biblical assertion-and-subversion strategy, Christianity changed its Jesus.

I don’t think I’d ever realized, until that moment, that a person could be beautiful and ugly at the same time. When you’re a teenage boy, you want the beautiful people to be truly beautiful. It’s hard to see otherwise, stupid as it sounds. I guess I owe her for that.” “It’s a lesson a lot of people never learn, Adolin.

History's long rhythm of challenges and response, of solutions that breed new crises, is not to be interrupted. But the Cold War left one shining example of human wisdom as a legacy for the future. Fifty years after the first use of atomic weapons, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unique and poignant shrines to the inspiring fact that they have no successor. The long confrontation of the Cold War, a struggle to the death between two systems for the mastery of human destiny, was managed and resolved without that nuclear war which lurked in the monstrous imminence in silos and submarines around the globe. That was the real victory.

He doesn’t want me to be me, or even him. He wants me to be this imagined perfect child who was born better than he ever could be.” “And that makes you not a person,” Shallan said, nodding. “It erases your ability to make choices or mistakes. Because you’re perfect. You were born to be perfect. So you can never earn anything on your own.

But still, a tragedy without a tune is like a sun that doesn’t give off heat; dead and nothing will grow from it. When men go to war, they do it to music. When they set sails for better shores and row into the vast blue, they do it to music. Even our hearts beat to some rhythm. And the director who neglects it neglects what makes us men.

Integrity doesn’t stop men from killing, Brightness,” Sebarial said. “It just makes them use different justifications.

Humankind had been given millennia to prove they could self-govern properly, and they had failed.

Venli attuned Anxiety, then Confidence, then Anxiety again.

Yes, very brave,” Shallan said. “We humans are known to bite.” “Ha ha. Yes, bite. And break your oaths and murder your spren. Ha ha.

You don’t get to choose to be free, Venli. Just which master to follow.

So?” Kaladin asked her. “What do you think?” “I think you’re going to look extremely silly using it. I can’t wait.

The best and truest duty of a person is to add to the world. To create, and not destroy.

Syl used to think human children came out through the nose in a particularly violent sneeze,

The best and truest duty of a person is to add to the world.

Dalinar said. “You’ve grown, soldier. Few men have the wisdom to realize when they need help. Fewer still have the strength to go get it. Well done. Very well done.

I don't have to believe," the voice drifted back. "I know gods exist. I simply hate them.

This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say.

Brightness Sylphrena. No man can judge another man’s heart or trials, for no man can truly know them.

Better for everyone to not have to deal with me,

Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination. I will protect those who cannot protect themselves. I will protect even those I hate so long as it is right.

The Windrunners or Skybreakers might have had trouble being so glib with a broken promise, but Shallan’s order was founded on the idea that all people lied, especially to themselves.

Dabbid wasn’t a mistake. He could make mistakes. Then he was stupid. But not always. He couldn’t think fast like others. But that made him different, not stupid. Stupid was a choice.

Although I had never envisioned marriage, I had thought of love. Not the furtive love I heard muffled in the corners or rooms of some of the harem wives. What I wanted was a connection, a shared heartbeat that kept rhythm across oceans and worlds. Not some alliance cobbled out of war. I didn’t want the prince from the folktales or some milk-skinned, honey-eyed youth who said his greetings and proclaimed his love in the same breath. I wanted a love thick with time, as inscrutable as if a lathe had carved it from night and as familiar as the marrow in my bones.

Human beings have their great chance in the novel. They say to the novelist: “Recreate us if you like, but we must come in,” and the novelist’s problem, as we have seen all along, is to give them a good run and to achieve something else at the same time. Whither shall he turn? not indeed for help but for analogy. Music, though it does not employ human beings, though it is governed by intricate laws, nevertheless does offer in its final expression a type of beauty which fiction might achieve in its own way. Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off but opening out. When the symphony is over we feel that the notes and tunes composing it have been liberated, they have found in the rhythm of the whole their individual freedom. Cannot the novel be like that? Is not there something of it in War and Peace?-—the book with which we began and in which we must end. Such an untidy book. Yet, as we read it, do not great chords begin to sound behind us, and when we have finished does not every item—even the catalogue of strategies—lead a larger existence than was possible at the time?

As we rode slowly through the battle camp, the sounds and smells of war overwhelmed my senses: horses stamping and sweating in anticipation; men shouting; the steady rhythm of metal grinding on stone; leather snapping and buckling, and woo d crackling in flame. The simmering energy of warriors as they eagerly awaited battle slithered through the camp like an invisible serpent

The prolongation of light meant the cessation of traditional stories in European cottages. And when the cottages took in American kerosene or paraffin there was prolongation. Then came lamps with full and steady light, lamps that gave real illumination. Told under this illumination the traditional stories ceased to be appropriate because the rhythm that gave them meaning was weakened. Other things happened to put traditional stories out of date. Young people went to schools and learned to read. The world reached into the villages; wars and the doings of congresses interested country people more and more. Claiming attention for the happenings of the day before, the newspaper reader took the place of the traditional storyteller, the man of memories.

She’d never been good at banter; it was like a skipping rope whose rhythm she couldn’t master enough to jump in with confidence. The war seemed not to exist here, despite the presence of officers in uniform.

It’s an old trick, Ulim,” she said. “Everyone—humans, listeners, and apparently gods—deep down suspects that every failure is their own. If you reflect blame on them, most people will assume they are responsible.

PIETT: But truly, what man doth not wear a mask? For all of us are masked in sone way -- Some choose sharp cruelty as their outward face, Some put themselves behind a king's facade, Some put on the disguise of arrogance, But underneath our masks, are we not one? Do not all wish for love, and joy, and peace? And whether rebel or Imperial, Do not our hearts all beat in time to make The pounding rhythm of the galaxy?

This is genius, Brightness. Truly.” She smiled. They liked to say that, and she appreciated the sentiment. The truth was, she merely knew how to harness the genius of others—as she was hoping to harness the storm.

Hair is gross. It seems smart to shave it off.” “You have hair.” “I do not; I just have me. Think about it, Kaladin. Everything else that comes out of your body you dispose of quickly and quietly—but this strange stuff oozes out of little holes in your head, and you let it sit there? Gross.” “Not all of us have the luxury of being fragments of divinity.” “Actually, everything is a fragment of divinities. We’re relatives that way.

The scents, unfortunately, did not go away with the light. And they remained a signal, defiant as any banner, of what had happened here. Blood. The stench of burning bodies. In the end, loss and victory smelled the same.

This,” Dalinar said, “is what war does to all of us. It chews us up and spits us out mangled. There’s no dishonor in taking a step away to recover. No more than there’s dishonor in giving yourself time to heal from a stab wound.

Storms. Was that how close they’d come? “Cutting it a little tight, don’t you think, son?” “A surgeon must be timely and precise.” “This is timely?” Lirin said. “Well, you do hate it when people waste time,” Kaladin said, grinning.

At the end of a workday I still had plenty of energy left to compete against Yank for the neighborhood girls. My secret weapon against Yank was my dancing. Most big men are clumsy and heavy-footed, but not me. I had a good sense of rhythm and I could move every part of my body. I had very fast hands, too, and good coordination. Swing music was sweeping the country and social dancing was all the rage. I went dancing six nights a week (never on a Sunday) to a different hall every night. That’s how you learned the dances. You learned by going dancing. They all had certain steps, unlike today where you just make it up as you go along. After the war, one of the jobs I had was a ballroom dance instructor. In

I don’t believe that everything in our lives is a matter of choice. In New Age circles, I often hear people say, “We create our own reality.” That’s a shortsighted and simplistic misunderstanding of how reality works. We don’t choose all of our circumstances, or our range of choices. The poor don’t generally choose to starve, nor do the oppressed choose their oppression, and the casualties of war don’t choose to die. But we can choose how we respond to the circumstances we’re presented with.

He knew of at least one way to quiet the nightmares, the mounting pressure, and the mental exhaustion. He couldn’t do much about his situation, or the cracks that were ever widening inside him. But he could stay busy, and in so doing, not let those cracks define him.

Somehow whether or not the war is winnable is beyond our scope, an irrelevant detail. We don’t do it to win anymore; we do it because it’s what we know how to do. Get ready to go. Get ready to come back. And the moments in between we mark on the calendar. It’s our battle rhythm.

The illusion without Lightweaving is superior, Design." "Because it's fake?" "Because the audience knows it's fake," Wit said. "When they watch and let themselves be amazed, they are joining in the illusion. They're giving you something vital. Something powerful. Something essential. Their belief.

It was the mist which made everything strange, spread across the land, a seven-foot-thick blanket, stretched almost uniformly over the flat bottom of the valley, and the gentle slopes leading down into it. As silent as the mist, Codrin’s army moved out of the forest. An observer high above the ground would see rows of floating heads, arranged in a matrix, the distance between them almost regular. Having helmets of many different colors, the heads offered a striking contrast to the white-gray monotony of the mist. An army of floating heads. Unaware of their weird appearance from above, the heads continued their journey down, toward Lenard’s army. To an observer on the ground, nothing could be seen until it was too late. Lenard’s sleeping soldiers woke up when the ground trembled to the rhythm of more than a thousand horses trampling everything in their way. They woke up, and they died. Some of them died while they slept. When the last cry died away, and the fog finally lifted, the surviving men surrendered. At the end of the clash, which became known as the Battle of the Mist, Codrin found that he had lost only fifteen men. Lenard had lost half of his army, his son and his life.

In every tomorrow I had imagined, this was never one of them. There were never any prospects beyond the life of a scholarly old maid, but that was a fate I had looked forward to—to live among parchments and sink into the compressed universes stitched into lines and lines of writing. To answer to no one. There was another sorrow, tucked beneath my surprise. Although I had never envisioned marriage, I had thought of love. Not the furtive love I heard muffled in the corners or rooms of some of the harem wives. What I wanted was a connection, a shared heartbeat that kept rhythm across oceans and worlds. Not some alliance cobbled out of war. I didn’t want the prince from the folktales or some milk-skinned, honey-eyed youth who said his greetings and proclaimed his love in the same breath. I wanted a love thick with time, as inscrutable as if a lathe had carved it from night and as familiar as the marrow in my bones. I wanted the impossible, which made it that much easier to push out of my mind.

With the smugness of an end man on parade, he bounced along on his sinewy legs, effortlessly marching to attention, floating with a lightness of step remarkably different from the heavy tread of the soldiers keeping time with him. Down by his thigh he carried, unsheathed, a thin little sword – it was a small curved sabre, for ceremonial use only – and he looked and turned sideways to the commander and back to the men behind, without straining his big powerful frame or getting out of step. He seemed to strive with every fibre of his soul to march past his commander with maximum style, and his strong sense of doing this well made him a happy man. ‘Left . . . left . . . left . . .’ he seemed to be mouthing to himself at each alternate step, and that was the rhythm to which the solid wall of military men, weighed down by packs and guns, advanced; each face was different in its stern concentration, and each one of these hundreds of soldiers seemed to mouth his own ‘Left . . . left . . . left . . .’ at each alternate step

But, anyway, once Great-grandma snuffed it, Granddad started going dancing again. That was how you got laid back in the day, and he used to totally rock at it but then the war happened, and then he was married and stuff, so it was like this amazing thing for him to suddenly have dancing again. Like a bit of lostness coming back to him after all these years. And he taught me. Really patiently because I’m a bit of a klutz. He didn’t actually say it was for getting laid (though I’m telling you the implication was there). He said it was how a gentleman wins a lady’s heart. An important life skill. And so I told him. I said, “Does it still work if a gentleman wants to win a gentleman’s heart?” He was quiet a moment. And my own heart was like thudump-thudump-thudump. To the rhythm of ohfuck-ohfuck-ohfuck. And then Granddad said, “Definitely.

Wit lingered, smiling at Dalinar. “I agree with her,” he whispered. “And on the topic of monarchs, I will have you know that I find you to be an endearing despot. You’re so pleasant, I almost don’t find it horrifying that I’m living among a people willing to trust a single man with near-absolute power over the lives of hundreds of thousands—while completely ignoring proper checks and balances upon his potential greed, jealousy, or ambition.

I like cards,” he said. The three stared at him in horror. “Cards,” Rlain said to Longing. “I’m best at towers, but I like runaround too. I’m pretty good, you know. Bisig says it’s because I’m good at bluffing. I find it fun. I like it.” The three women exchanged looks, obviously confused. “I thought you should know something about me,” Rlain said. “I figured maybe if you did, you would stop making things up.” He nodded to them, then forcibly attuned Peace

Your friend professes belief yet I’m not convinced. What about you? Are the gods real?” “They are real,” says I, “And you’re a prick.” “But still, a tragedy without a tune is like a sun that doesn’t give off heat; dead and nothing will grow from it. When men go to war, they do it to music. When they set sails for better shores and row into the vast blue, they do it to music. Even our hearts beat to some rhythm. And the director who neglects it neglects what makes us men.

What are we doing?” she said, landing on his shoulder and sitting primly with her legs crossed and her hands on her knees. “Actually, I don’t care. I need to tell you something. Aladar’s axehounds had puppies. I had no idea how much I needed to see puppies until I flew by them this morning. They are the grossest things on the planet, Kaladin. They’re somehow so gross that they’re cute. So cute I could have died! Except I can’t, because I’m an eternal sliver of God himself, and we have standards about things like that.

IN THE BEGINNING…WAS a very female sea. For two-and-a-half billion years on earth, all lifeforms floated in the womb-like environment of the planetary ocean – nourished and protected by its fluid chemicals, rocked by the lunar-tidal rhythms. Charles Darwin believed the menstrual cycle originated here, organically echoing the moon-pulse of the sea. And, because this longest period of life’s time on earth was dominated by marine forms reproducing parthenogenetically, he concluded that the female principle was primordial

Fine,” Syl said. “I’ll do your part.” Her image fuzzed, and she became a perfect replica of Kaladin, sitting on his own shoulder. “Well well,” she said in a growling, low-pitched voice. “Grumble grumble. Get in line, men. Storming rain, ruining otherwise terrible weather. Also, I’m banning toes.” “Toes?” “People keep tripping!” she continued. “I can’t have you all hurting yourselves. So, no toes from now on. Next week we’ll try not having feet. Now, go off and get some food. Tomorrow we’re going to get up before dawn to practice scowling at one another.

Imagine you had two pieces of cloth, one red, one yellow. Before you and your brother parted, you each reached into a bag and selected one—but kept it hidden, putting it away in a box, unseen. You parted, traveling to distant quarters of the land. Then, by agreement, let us say that on the same day at the same time you each opened your box and took out your cloth. Upon finding the red one, you’d instantly know your brother had found the yellow one. You shared something, that bond of knowledge—the Connection exists, but isn’t something that can necessarily be exploited. At least not by most people. A Bondsmith though

Nothing in here except some empty wine bottles,” Red said, opening drawers and cabinets on the hutch. “Wait! I think I found Gaz’s sense of humor.” He held up something small between two fingers. “Nope. Just a withered old piece of fruit.” Gaz had found a small bedchamber at the rear of the room, through the door that Veil had noticed. “If you do find my sense of humor, kill it,” he called from inside. “That will be more merciful than forcing it to deal with your jokes, Red.” “Brightness Shallan thinks they’re funny. Right?” “Anything that annoys Gaz is funny, Red,” she said. “Well, I annoy myself!” Gaz called. (less)

True blues ain't no new news about who's been abused For the blues is as old as my stolen soul I sang the blues when the missionaries came Passing out bibles in Jesus' name I sang the blues in the hull of the ship Beneath the sting of the slavemaster's whip I sang the blues when the ship anchored the dark My family being sold on a slave block I sang the blues being torn from my first born And hung my head and cried when my wife took his life And then committed suicide. I sang the blues on the slavemaster's plantation helping Him build his free nation I sang the blues in the cottonfield, hustlin' to make the daily yield I sang the blues when he forced my woman to beg Lord knows how I wished he was dead I sang the blues on the run, ducking the dogs and dodging the gun I sang the blues hanging from the tree in a desperate attempt to break free I sang the blues when the sun went down, cursing the master when he wasn't around I sang the blues in all these wars dying for some unknown cause I sang the blues in a high tone, low moan, loud groan, soft grunt, hard funk I sang the blues in land sea and air, about who when why and where I sang the blues in church on sunday, slaving on monday, misused on tuesday, abused on wednesday, accused on thursday, fried alive on friday, and died on saturday. Sho nuff singing the blues I sang the blues in the summer, fall winter and spring I know sho nuff the blues is my thing I sang the backwater blues, rhythm and blues, gospel blues, saint louis blues, crosstown blues, chicago blues, mississippi GODDAMN blues, the watts blues, the harlem blues, hoe blues, gut-bucket blues, funky chunky blues, i sang the up north cigarette corp blues, the down south sprung out the side of my mouth blues, I sang the blues black, i sang the blues blacker, i sang the blues blackest I SANG BOUT MY SHO NUFF BLUE BLACKNESS! from "True Blues" by the Last Poets

Islamic art in its many forms is of the greatest import for the understanding of the essence of Islam and a central means of transmitting its message to the contemporary world. When one thinks of Islam, one should go beyond the repetitive scenes on television of wars and battles, which unfortunately abound in today’s world, to behold the peace and harmony of Islamic art seen in the great mosques, traditional urban settings and gardens, and the rhythm and geometry of calligraphy and arabesque designs; read in the poems that sing of the love that permeates all of God’s creation and binds creatures to God; and heard in the strains of melodies that echo what we had experienced in that primordial morn preceding creation and our descent into this lowly world. Today more than ever before, the understanding of Islamic art is an indispensable key for the comprehension of Islam itself. Those who are sensitive to the language of traditional art and the beauty of a paradisal order that emanates from it as well as the intellectual principles conveyed through it can learn much from this art.

The Bad-Moon Girls appear on days when Dad doesn't know what he is thinking, or even if he is thinking. Those days can weigh less than air or more than an ocean. He has blank thoughts without feelings, followed by heavy feelings without thoughts. Time means nothing. A minute ticks by in the same rhythm as an entire day. He can look at one thing for an hour without moving. He can see me or Victor without knowing we are in the room, peering at us as if we are underwater, moving in warped slow motion. After the nothingness, he wades through a stagnant lake with the moon reflected in it, waiting for the daylight to rinse it away. He almost drowns while time ticks on. The sky is filled with black milk. No stars. Two days can pass before he surfaces. Dad's brain-switch, the focusing thing the rest of us switch on to make things look better, is a bit buggered. Those are his words, not mine. The Bad-Moon Girls whisper evil in Dad's ear, the sort of women who would set their own mother on fire if there were no other way to light their cigarettes. The trouble is, they can follow. Just as we were setting off to Clacton last autumn, they hunted him down.

She tried to make herself relax, drawing a fanciful image of sunlight streaming around him. That, however, made the four Cryptics start humming in excitement. “Could you all step back and give me more room?” Shallan asked the creatures. They didn’t cock their heads like humans might have, but she could sense confusion in the way their patterns sped up. Then, as if one, all four took exactly one step backward. They then proceeded to lean in even closer. Shallan sighed, and as she kept drawing, she got Ua’pam’s arm wrong. Spren were hard, because they didn’t quite have human proportions. The Cryptics started humming with excitement. “That’s not a lie!” Shallan said, reaching for her eraser. “It’s a mistake, you nitwits.” “Mmmm…” Ornament said. Beryl’s Cryptic had a fine pattern, delicate like lace, and a squeaky voice. “Nitwit! I am a nitwit. Mmmm.” “A nitwit is a stupid person or spren,” Pattern explained. “But she said it in an endearing way!” “Stupidly endearing!” Mosaic said. She was Vathah’s Cryptic, and her pattern had sharp lines to it. She often included rapid fast sections that waved like the women’s script. “Contradiction! Wonderful and blessed contradiction of nonsense and human complication to be alive!

Jazz was the opposite of everything Harry Anslinger believed in. It is improvised, and relaxed, and free-form. It follows its own rhythm. Worst of all, it is a mongrel music made up of European, Caribbean, and African echoes, all mating on American shores. To Anslinger, this was musical anarchy, and evidence of a recurrence of the primitive impulses that lurk in black people, waiting to emerge. “It sounded,” his internal memos said, “like the jungles in the dead of night.”94 Another memo warned that “unbelievably ancient indecent rites of the East Indies are resurrected”95 in this black man’s music. The lives of the jazzmen, he said, “reek of filth.”96 His agents reported back to him97 that “many among the jazzmen think they are playing magnificently when under the influence of marihuana but they are actually becoming hopelessly confused and playing horribly.” The Bureau believed that marijuana slowed down your perception of time98 dramatically, and this was why jazz music sounded so freakish—the musicians were literally living at a different, inhuman rhythm. “Music hath charms,”99 their memos say, “but not this music.” Indeed, Harry took jazz as yet more proof that marijuana drives people insane. For example, the song “That Funny Reefer Man”100 contains the line “Any time he gets a notion, he can walk across the ocean.” Harry’s agents warned: “He does think that.” Anslinger looked out over a scene filled with men like Charlie Parker,101 Louis Armstrong,102 and Thelonious Monk,103 and—as the journalist Larry Sloman recorded—he longed to see them all behind bars.104 He wrote to all the agents he had sent to follow them, and instructed: “Please prepare all cases in your jurisdiction105 involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws. We will have a great national round-up arrest of all such persons on a single day. I will let you know what day.” His advice on drug raids to his men was always “Shoot first.”106 He reassured congressmen that his crackdown would affect not “the good musicians, but the jazz type.”107 But when Harry came for them, the jazz world would have one weapon that saved them: its absolute solidarity. Anslinger’s men could find almost no one among them who was willing to snitch,108 and whenever one of them was busted,109 they all chipped in to bail him out.

A school bus is many things. A school bus is a substitute for a limousine. More class. A school bus is a classroom with a substitute teacher. A school bus is the students' version of a teachers' lounge. A school bus is the principal's desk. A school bus is the nurse's cot. A school bus is an office with all the phones ringing. A school bus is a command center. A school bus is a pillow fort that rolls. A school bus is a tank reshaped- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a science lab- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a safe zone. A school bus is a war zone. A school bus is a concert hall. A school bus is a food court. A school bus is a court of law, all judges, all jury. A school bus is a magic show full of disappearing acts. Saw someone in half. Pick a card, any card. Pass it on to the person next to you. He like you. She like you. K-i-s-s-i . . . s-s-i-p-p-i is only funny on a school bus. A school bus is a stage. A school bus is a stage play. A school bus is a spelling bee. A speaking bee. A get your hand out of my face bee. A your breath smell like sour turnips bee. A you don't even know what a turnip bee is. A maybe not, but I know what a turn up is and your breath smell all the way turnt up bee. A school bus is a bumblebee, buzzing around with a bunch of stingers on the inside of it. Windows for wings that flutter up and down like the windows inside Chinese restaurants and post offices in neighborhoods where school bus is a book of stamps. Passing mail through windows. Notes in the form of candy wrappers telling the street something sweet came by. Notes in the form of sneaky middle fingers. Notes in the form of fingers pointing at the world zooming by. A school bus is a paintbrush painting the world a blurry brushstroke. A school bus is also wet paint. Good for adding an extra coat, but it will dirty you if you lean against it, if you get too comfortable. A school bus is a reclining chair. In the kitchen. Nothing cool about it but makes perfect sense. A school bus is a dirty fridge. A school bus is cheese. A school bus is a ketchup packet with a tiny hole in it. Left on the seat. A plastic fork-knife-spoon. A paper tube around a straw. That straw will puncture the lid on things, make the world drink something with some fizz and fight. Something delightful and uncomfortable. Something that will stain. And cause gas. A school bus is a fast food joint with extra value and no food. Order taken. Take a number. Send a text to the person sitting next to you. There is so much trouble to get into. Have you ever thought about opening the back door? My mother not home till five thirty. I can't. I got dance practice at four. A school bus is a talent show. I got dance practice right now. On this bus. A school bus is a microphone. A beat machine. A recording booth. A school bus is a horn section. A rhythm section. An orchestra pit. A balcony to shot paper ball three-pointers from. A school bus is a basketball court. A football stadium. A soccer field. Sometimes a boxing ring. A school bus is a movie set. Actors, directors, producers, script. Scenes. Settings. Motivations. Action! Cut. Your fake tears look real. These are real tears. But I thought we were making a comedy. A school bus is a misunderstanding. A school bus is a masterpiece that everyone pretends to understand. A school bus is the mountain range behind Mona Lisa. The Sphinx's nose. An unknown wonder of the world. An unknown wonder to Canton Post, who heard bus riders talk about their journeys to and from school. But to Canton, a school bus is also a cannonball. A thing that almost destroyed him. Almost made him motherless.