Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Anonymous

Quote by Anonymous

Author

Anonymous

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Anonymous. more

You May Also Like

“That night, the Raka conspirators had plenty of news to report, particularly Ochobu. Aly had not known that the mages of the Chain had been laboring to eliminate any mages who had worked magic on the Crown’s behalf. So far they had killed seven of the most powerful. Chelaol would call this count of the dead another ‘good start,’ Aly thought grimly. This crude business of counting up lives taken struck her as a bad idea. It took the horror from death. When Ochobu named four mages on Lombyn who had had been killed in the streets of their towns, it had been about numbers, not lives. Maybe this is how you become a Rittevon, she thought. You get used to the dead being described as numbers, not fathers or daughters or grandparents. She turned to Dove when Ochobu finished, 'don’t ever be like this,' she urged. 'don’t think that it doesn’t matter if you only hear of murder as a number. If you keep it at a distance.”

“So we grew up with mythic dead To spoon upon midwestern bread And spread old gods' bright marmalade To slake in peanut-butter shade, Pretending there beneath our sky That it was Aphrodite's thigh... While by the porch-rail calm and bold His words pure wisdom, stare pure gold My grandfather, a myth indeed, Did all of Plato supersede While Grandmama in rockingchair Sewed up the raveled sleeve of care Crocheted cool snowflakes rare and bright To winter us on summer night. And uncles, gathered with their smokes Emitted wisdoms masked as jokes, And aunts as wise as Delphic maids Dispensed prothetic lemonades To boys knelt there as acolytes To Grecian porch on summer nights; Then went to bed, there to repent The evils of the innocent; The gnat-sins sizzling in their ears Said, through the nights and through the years Not Illinois nor Waukegan But blither sky and blither sun. Though mediocre all our Fates And Mayor not as bright as Yeats Yet still we knew ourselves. The sum? Byzantium. Byzantium.”