## Metadata - Author: [[Josiah Bancroft]] - Full Title: Senlin Ascends - Category: #books ## Highlights - “You’ve made it impossible for me to read a book in peace. When you’re not here, I just gaze at the words until they tumble off the page into a puddle in my lap. Instead of reading, I sit there and review the hours of the day I spent in your company, and I am more charmed by that story than anything the author has scribbled down. ([Location 1720](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=1720)) - we are not such a tidy, reasonable, and humane race. Our thoughts don’t stand in grammatical rows, our hearts don’t draw equations, our consciences don’t have the benefit of historians whispering the answers to us. ([Location 2344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2344)) - It was late. They were drunk. The imported light of the moon swam like silver minnows on their skin and the iron lattice of the tabletop. It was a slinking glow fit for melancholy. ([Location 2419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2419)) - ‘Home’ is an exaggeration made true by distance.” ([Location 2578](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2578)) - You became a staple of soirees; you could fill a room. Ogier tells me that many, many parties were born on your toe and died at your heel. ([Location 2650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2650)) - “You are running at the wrong end of the rabid dog, Headmaster. ([Location 2674](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2674)) - “Your plan is bad. You do know that? If your plan were a horse, it would have three legs, two heads and no end to it.” ([Location 2685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2685)) - “You’ll make a better impression on our host dressed as an undertaker. He’s not like his guests, all high as fireworks and dim as smoke. ([Location 2705](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2705)) - “The port? Out of the question. It’s impossible to secure. Beside the professional sinners, the pirates and smugglers, there is a whole host of amateur cretins: imbeciles, drunks, henchmen, lapdogs, whores, spoon-snatchers...” The Commissioner did not so much conclude his list as douse it with the tipping back of a champagne flute he snatched from a tray. ([Location 2839](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2839)) - “Often the simplest way to unlock a door is to knock upon it.” ([Location 2862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2862)) - “Go to bed if you must, Tom. I am a fly who lives for a day! I must buzz until I die,” ([Location 2871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2871)) - The interior of the Bureau was whitewashed and lit with electric bulbs that burned bright as crucibles. Racks of rifles and sabers were around every corner. Iron doors rasped open and clanged shut. Boot heels rang against the flagstone floor like hailstones. Senlin couldn’t tell if the distant human sounds he heard were those of men howling with laughter or wailing in pain. He was still waiting to feel brave. He felt as brittle and small as a piece of chalk. ([Location 2919](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2919)) - “Spring is gray and miserable and rainy for three or four weeks while the snow melts. The ditches turn into creeks and everything you own is clammy as a frog belly. Then one morning, you walk outside and the sun is out and the clover has grown over the ditches and the trees are pointed with leaves, like ten thousand green arrowheads, and the air smells like...” and here he had to fumble for a phrase, “like a roomful of stately ladies and one wet dog.” ([Location 2937](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=2937)) - Marya is in that crate on my dresser. Not in flesh and blood, but in the conviction of memory and mind. ([Location 4400](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=4400)) - “He’s hot-headed, treacherous, free with his hands and trigger-happy, but underneath all that gentility beats the heart of a rabid dog.” ([Location 5648](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=5648)) - Obsession made him dangerous to his friends. They fell so he could climb. ([Location 6179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=6179)) - Only Iren gave them hope against the onslaught. She by herself was more devastating than a bank of riflemen. Her leather apron flared as her thick arms snapped life into her chain. ([Location 6322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BHNNKJ2&location=6322))