“You want to do the right thing," said Ramy, bullish. "You always do. But you think the right thing is martyrdom. You think if you suffer enough for whatever sins you've committed, then you're absolved." "I do not-" "That's why you took the fall for us that night. Every time you come up against something difficult, you just want to make it go away, and you think the way to do that is self-flagellation. You're obsessed with punishment. But that's not how this works, Birdie. You going to prison fixes nothing. You hanging from the gallows fixes nothing. The world's still broken. A war's still coming. The only way to properly make amends is to stop it, which you don't want to do, because really what this is about is your being afraid.”
Book:Babel