City of Ash and Red

And if you’re not anticipating anything, then there’s no reason to rush.

The future was far too distant a thing to worry about now, and the present was filled with survival.

he was incapable of keeping her no matter how great the wounds he suffered.

But he and his ex-wife knew that there was more to talking than just sharing their future dreams, the impossibility of ever realizing those dreams, and the faith that it would all come true somehow anyway. Talking about their pasts instead—about embarrassments and longings, about the things they wanted back and the things they did not—was a way to express regret for the times when their lives had not overlapped, and to gladly serve as witness to each other’s lives.

saying that leadership skills were a by-product of position and power, and that accomplishment was a by-product of doing one’s job. In other words, once you had the position, you naturally became a leader, and if given the duties, the accomplishments followed.

Even with everything else here as hazy as a dream and as vague as a ghost, this night, this identical night, filled him with a sense of reality.

realized that he wasn’t really attached to anything he had packed. The suitcase that had seemed to carry the weight of the world was really nothing more than a collection of insignificant objects, only so much dead weight. Not having clothes to change into right away was inconvenient, but at least the things he lost could be easily purchased in Country C. He regretted losing the books, as they were in his mother tongue, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt to slowly read some books in the local language, for practice. As it turned out, none of the items that had weighed so heavily in his suitcase were irreplaceable. As long as he had the cash to buy them, that is.

this was not a world where morals, order, education, and kindness were the norm, but rather one where plunder, pillage, violence, and garbage ruled.

and he would have to develop an eye for recognizing designer bags.