Inspired Words, Part 2

The second book in the Prince of Nothing series by R. Scott Bakker is titled The Warrior-Prophet. More war than I like but still so many beautiful words! Here are two of my favorites...

A book was never "read." Here, as elsewhere, language betrayed the true nature of the activity. To say a book was read was to make the same mistake as the gambler who crowed about winning as though he'd taken it by force of hand or resolve... But to open a book was by far the more profound gamble. To open a book was not only to seize a moment of helplessness, not only to relinquish a jealous handful of heartbeats to the unpredictable mark of another man's quill, it was allow oneself to be written. For what was a book if not a long consecutive surrender to the movements of another's soul? (pg. 268)

Men were like coins: they had two sides. Where one side of them saw, the other side of them was seen, and though all men were both at once, men could only truly know the side of themselves that saw and the side of others that was seen - they could only know the inner half of themselves and the outer half of others. (pg. 442)