First, from The Dragonbone Chair:
“Ko muhuhok na mik aqa nop, we say in Yiqanuc: ‘When it falls on your head, then you are knowing it is a rock.’”
“‘Mikmok hanno so gijiq,’ we say in Yiqanuc!” Binabik called. “‘If you wish to carry a hungry weasel in your pocket, it is your choice!”
A ponderous one from The Banished of Muirwood:
Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
One that made me cry from Artemis:
“What’s up, Dad? You’re slow as snot today.”
“Just being thorough.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve seen you fire up a torch with one hand and set mixture levels with the other at the same time. Why are you—”
Oh. I stopped talking. This wasn’t a normal job. Tomorrow, his daughter’s life would rely on the quality of these welds. It slowly dawned on me that, to him, this was the most critical project he’d ever done. He would accept nothing short of his absolute best. And if that meant taking all day, so be it. I stood back and let him work. After more fastidious double checks, he got started. I assisted and did what I was told. We may have our friction, but when it came to welding he was the master and I was the apprentice. Very few people get a chance to quantify how much their father loves them. But I did. The job should have taken forty-five minutes, but Dad spent three and a half hours on it. My father loves me 366 percent more than he loves anything else. Good to know.
One that makes me ponder from City of Miracles:
What a tremendous sin impatience is, he thinks. It blinds us to the moment before us, and it is only when that moment has passed that we look back and see it was full of treasures.
One that made me laugh from Gardens of the Moon:
“It will be a fine day for a walk, pronounces Kruppe, who is wise in all things.”
– Kruppe (of course)
And finally one that reminds me enough of San Francisco that I couldn’t help but stop and think from The City Stained Red:
This city is sick, his father had once told him. It eats people and craps out gold and people pick the filth up off the city streets and shove it in their faces and smear it on their lips.