Matthew Stover Quotes

(V.8) Del Rey, p. 214

We can each sit and wait to die, from the very day of our births. Those of us who do not do so, choose to ask--and to answer--the two questions that define every conscious creature: What do I want? and What will I do to get it? Which are, finally, only one question: What is my will? Caine teaches us that the answer is always found within our own experience; our lives provide the structure of the question, and a properly phrased question contains its own answer.

"I guess heroes feel like they've accomplished something." <br/k> "And you haven't? Several thousand slaves might disagree."

A powerful enough metaphor grows its own truth.

I read once, somewhere, that the way you know you've grown up is when your future death becomes a stone in your shoe: when you feel it with every step.

"Depa is right: Jedi are insane." <br/k> "Ever since I came to this planet, people have been telling me how crazy I am. They've told me this so many times that I had started to wonder if it might be true. Now, though, I understand: you don't say this because it's true. Not even because you think it's true. You say it because you hope it's true. Because if I am insane, you aren't really the revolting slime-hearted vermin that, down deep, you know you are."

I don't have to be a hero, he thought in silent wonder. All I have to do is pretend.

Maybe. A powerful. Enough. Metaphor. Grows. Its own. Truth.

Can't trust a fascist--truth is always your first sacrifice to the welfare of the state

It dawned on me then that Nick was proud of himself. Proud of what we had done. It may have been an unfamiliar feeling for him: that peculiarly delicious pride that comes from having taken a terrible risk to do something truly admirable. Of overcoming the instinct of self-presrvation: of fighting our fears and winning. It is the pride of discovering that one is not merely a bundle of reflexes and conditioned responses; that instead one is a thinking being, who can choose the right over the easy, and justice over safety.

It's customary, at times like this, to say a few words. A man shouldn't die with no understanding of why he's been murdered. I do not pride myself on my eloquence, and so I will keep this simple.

We always volunteer, sir. All of us. It's who we are.

"I think that you are a very brilliant man. I think that you have more courage than you have ever guessed. I think that you truly care about this city, and the people in it. I think your cynicism is a fraud." <br/k> "What-what-really, this is astonishing-" <br/k> "I think that if you were truly as corrupt and venal as you pretend, you would be in the Senate."

His destiny had betrayed him, had made him a destroyer on a scale that humbled even Caine. Destiny, he understood with bitter certainty, could not be trusted.

"You're in the jungle, now. There are no rules." <br/k> "Of course there are. Don't be an idiot."