“She said, "You're a warrior. So how do you kill without rage?""In compassion. Because of necessity." Hrahima set the empty water bowl back in Samarkar's hands. "The same way you carry water.”
“Trusting someone was like holding a little water in your cupped hands - it was so easy to spill the water, and you could never get it back.”
“She glanced at the minotaur horn in my hands, then back at me. I imagined she was going to say, You killed a minotaur! or Wow, you're so awesome! or something like that. Instead she said, "You drool when you sleep.”
“Fear had an anatomy. A curious thought. It had genitals, a bladder and bowls. That was where you felt fear. Not in your head. It was between your legs. It affected your excretion. It emptied you. It turned your bowls to water. It is disgusting.”
“It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?”
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”