Maximilian Birkl > Maximilian's Quotes

“War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who remains.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible. Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Children ceased to be children when you put a sword in their hands. When you taught them to fight a war, then you armed them and put them on the front lines, they were not children anymore. They were soldiers.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“They were monsters!" Rin shrieked. "They were not human!"

"Have you ever considered" he said slowly "that that was exactly what they thought of us?”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Many more will live,” Rin said, and she was nearly certain that it was true. And even if it wasn’t, she was willing to take that gamble. She knew she would bear full responsibility for the murders she was about to commit, bear the weight of them for as long as she lived. But it was worth it. For the sake of her vengeance, it was worth it. This was divine retribution for what the Federation had wreaked on her people. This was her justice. “They aren’t people,” she whispered. “They’re animals. I want you to make them burn. Every last one.” “And what will you give me in return?” inquired the Phoenix. “The price to alter the fabric of the world is steep.” What did a god, especially the Phoenix, want? What did any god ever want? “I can give you worship,” she promised. “I can give you an unending flow of blood.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“This is what you have to tell yourself," Qara said fiercely. "You have to believe that it was necessary. That it stopped something worse. And even if it wasn't, it's the lie we'll tell ourselves, starting today and every day afterward. You made your choice. There's nothing you can do about it now. It's over.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Then I will die on my feet," she said. "I will die with flames in my hand and fury in my heart. I will die fighting for the legacy of my people, rather than on Shiro's operating table, drugged and wasted. I will not die a coward.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“She could not dissociate the rabbit's flesh from the charred bodies in the square. She could not see the hundreds of decapitated heads on poles without seeing the soldier who had walked down the row of kneeling prisoners, methodically bringing his sword down again and again as if reaping corn. She could not pass the babies in their barrel graves without hearing their uncomprehending screams.
The entire time, her own mind scream the unanswerable question: Why?
The cruelty could not register for her. Bloodlust, she understood. Bloodlust, she was guilty of. She had lost herself in battle, too; she had gone further than she should have, she had hurt others when she should have stopped.
But this- viciousness on this scale, wanton slaughter of this magnitude, against innocents who hadn't even lifted a finger in self-defense, this she could not imagine doing.
They surrendered, she wanted to scream at her disappeared enemy. They dropped their weapons. They posed no threat to you. Why did you have to do this?
A rational explanation eluded her.
Because the answer could not be rational. It was not founded in military strategy. It was not because of a shortage of food rations, or because the risk of insurgency or backlash. It was, simply, what happened when one race decided that the other was insignificant.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“They're monsters! I know! I was at Golyn Nis! I lay amid the corpses for days! But you-" Kitay swallowed, choking on his words. "You turned around and did the exact same thing. Civilians. Innocents. Children, Rin. You just buried an entire country and you don't feel a thing.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“She’s a barbarian, but don’t hold it against her. She’s brilliant.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“She had begun petting the Kauraanian kitten, and it purred like it wanted to be a starship engine when it grew up.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“The adjutant, Twenty Cicada, made an entirely remarkable noise, like he’d drowned a laugh and swallowed its corpse.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“And the continuity of endocrine response worked for everyone, Stationer or Teixcalaanlitzlim or something else: endocrine response said, in that brutal language of the flesh, This person has had their hands inside you, and you welcomed them in. Let’s do it again. Here are nice chemicals to help.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“We-when-we-are-Teixcalaan are known without singing...We-when-we-are-Teixcalaan are known with language only, and still clearly...Language is not so transparent... language is not so transparent, but we are sometimes known, even so. If we are lucky.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles—this they name empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“Having whole hours to contemplate her degree of fuckedness was a luxury.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“The motion of a swift is an impenetrable language; as incomprehensible to me as the thoughts of a flower when it opens its petals at dawn, without memory or mind. A coherent logic and a dance, but not one I can shape within myself. All my attempts are approximation. One cannot render meaning in language one finds meaningless; nevertheless I know there is a design, a speaking, a world just on the other side of shadow, untouchable but nonetheless real. Three years since I came home from Ebrekt, and I still dream of the swifts, running: in dreams, sometimes I understand them.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles—this they name empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. —Tacitus (quoting Calgacus), Agricola 30”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“But there was absolutely nothing sexy about a decontamination shower. This moment was, in fact, the least attractive Three Seagrass had ever felt while being naked and near someone she’d had sex with.)”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“everyone had politics, even if only some people had sex.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“Mahit couldn't decide if she was horrified, proud, or simply, deliciously, hideously intrigued.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“Eight Antidote had never had any restrictions on his media accesses. He’d watched a lot of people have sex on holoproj. It seemed messy and also made people do stupid things afterward.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“This person has had their hands inside you, and you welcomed them in. Let’s do it again. Here are nice chemicals to help.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“Palamedes remembers everything: That was his problem.

I always remember him. That’s mine.”
― Tamsyn Muir, The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex

“This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“Nothing touched by Empire stays clean.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“Three Seagrass had taken her hands away from her face, and the expression which was growing there was one that Mahit had seen before: it was Three Seagrass focusing inward, preparing to bend the universe around her will, because all other options were untenable.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“We're arrested. But—fuck it. Let's unarrest ourselves.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“war was nothing more than an argument in which no one had landed on a better solution than killing each other.”
― Becky Chambers, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within

“I’m sorry, but I can’t accept a lesser evil for the sake of it being lesser.”
― Becky Chambers, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within