Here are some wondriferous quotes from Traitor by Matthew Stover:
"'This has been attempted before,' Tsavong Lah growled. 'The
Jeedai Wurth Skidder, and the Jeedai Tahiri on Yavin
Four.'" (32)
"That's the trouble with fanatics, he thought. They're
easy to manipulate, but somehow they take everything five steps too
far." Nom Anor's thoughts on p. 36
"Well begun... is half done." - Vergere (37)
"Oh yes. Is this not what playgrounds are in the New Republic - a
place for children to learn the boundaries of behaviour? One
learns to fight in playground scuffles; one learns politics in
playground cliques. It is on the playground that one is initiated
into the madness of mobs, the insidious mire of peer pressure, and
the final, unthinkable, inarguable unfairness of existence -
that some are smarter, others stronger or faster, and no force at
your command can make you better than your gifts." - Vergere (47)
"What distinguishes a flower from a weed is only - and exactly -
this: the choice of the gardener." - Vergere (62)
"No one who can tell the dhuryam to blow itself out of an air
lock." - Jacen Solo (63)
"I guess you could say, Jacen thought, I taught the
dhuryam that sometimes partners are more useful than slaves."
- Jacen Solo (65)
"You can kill me, but you can't make me obey." - Jacen Solo (65)
"If I came of a species that had never had arms, I wouldn't
recognize a hammer - and I'd have no use for it, even if I somehow
guessed what it was. A hammer would have nothing to do with me at
all.
Like the Force has nothing to do with the Yuuzhan Vong." -
Jacen Solo (68)
"If a species that had always been blind met a species that had
always been deaf, how would they communicate? To Jacen, the answer
was obvious: they would have to improvise a language based on a
sense that they shared." (70)
"To create the emphatic bond, as he has done, requires each of them
to downplay their differences, and focus on all they have in
common. Yes: the second step is complete." - Vergere on Jacen
Solo's completion of the second step of the Jacen Solo Project. XD
Jacen is a healer & mobbed by the sick, like in Jesus Christ Superstar.
"There are no weeds here.
Every slave was a flower. Every life was precious. he would spend
the last erg of his strength to save every one of them." - Jacen
Solo's thoughts on p. 76
"I don't believe it for a nanoblip." - Nom Anor, who has learned
many Basic expressions. XD
"Warriors win battles without murdering the weak." - Jacen Solo, p.87
* Jacen used amphistaff armour. *
"Winning... is not the same as fighting." - Vergere (91)
"Vergere spoke without the faintest hint of irony. 'I tell you
this: though neither he nor they yet know it, he is the greatest of
all the Jedi. Jacen Solo is the living Jedi dream. Even without
the Force, he is more dangerous than you can possibly imagine." -
Vergere (91)
Jacen used a grenade! XD
"Have you not learned, Executor... that everything I tell you is
the truth?" - Vergere to Nom Anor (97)
"Ever the optimist... You assume that we will live out the hour."
- Vergere to Nom Anor (101)
"Does our avatar of the Twin seek only confusion and slaughter - or
does he produce confusion and slaughter as a diversion?" -
Vergere (102)
"'Jacen, no! Don't do it!'
He whirled, staggering, white-blind and gasping.
The voice had been his brother's.
'Anakin - ?'
'You can't kill this one, Jacen,' Anakin's voice said from beyond
the white. 'This one's your friend.'" - Anakin's ghost
talking to Jacen (108)
"Where in all nine Corellian hells am I?" - Jacen Solo (116)
"If the world is full of violence, savagery, and torture, this must
be how they want it.
Lots of things about the Yuuzhan Vong made sense to him now." -
Jacen Solo's ruminations on p. 120
"Out of control is just code for 'I don't want to admit I'm
the kind of person who would do such things.' It's a lie." -
Vergere to Jacen Solo (122)
"But everything you tell yourself should be the truth - or
as close to it as you can come. You did what you did because you
are who you are. Self-control, or its lack, had nothing to do with
it." - Vergere to Jacen Solo about his slaughter of Yuuzhan Vong in
the nursery. (123)
"Jacen shook his head. His family history was itself the ultimate
argument that the dark side is everybody's affair, but he
wasn't about to get into that." (124)
"Nobody could remake him into the Jacen Solo he remembered: the
cheerfully reckless Jacen, chasing Zekk into the downlevels; the
exasperated Jacen, trying one more time to make Tenel Ka crack a
smile; the Jedi apprentice Jacen, born to the Force, but still awed
not only by the legend of Uncle Luke but by the power his uncle's
teaching could draw out of him; the teenage Jacen who could wilt
under his mother's stern glare, but still exchange roguish winks
with his father and his sister the instant Mother turned away."
(128)
"Jacen reflected bitterly that a large part of growing up seemed to
involve watching everything change, and discovering that all
changes are permanent. That nothing ever changes back.
This was what the alien beauty of Yuuzhan'tar whispered constantly
in the back of his head: Nothing lasts forever. The only
permanence is death." (128-129)
"You are free to do, or not do, what you will. Do you understand
the difference between training and teaching? Between learning to
do and learning to be?" - Vergere to Jacen Solo
(129)
"I thought the danger of the dark side was that it is
natural: that's why it's easier than the light, yes?" - Vergere to
Jacen Solo (145)
"What you call the dark side is the raw, unrestrained Force
itself: you call the dark side what you find when you give
yourself wholly to the Force. To be a Jedi is to control your
passion . . . but Jedi control limits your power. Greatness -
true greatness of any kind - requires the surrender of
control. Passion that is guided, not walled away. Leave
your limits behind." - Vergere to Jacen Solo (168)
* "On a smog-blackened balcony jutting just below the far end of
the gangway, stood Anakin." (172)
"He'd been lost for hours when Anakin walked in." (183)
"Anakin shrugged. people are capable of rationalizing just
about anything." (190)
"everything's easy when you have no doubts. - Anakin Solo (190)
"better death than life bought with innocent blood." -
Anakin Solo (194)
"you could have killed them all. you had the power. and you
could have killed the cavern beast. you had power enough for that,
too, i bet. just like you could have killed vergere, and nom anor.
but you didn't kill anybody. instead, you used the power you'd
found to serve life. your dark side ain't all that dark, big
brother." - Anakin Solo to Jacen Solo (194)
** Jacen converses with Anakin kind of like Caulden and his
deceased younger brother Allie in The Catcher in the Rye.
**
"the force is one, jacen. it encompasses all opposites. truth
and lies, life and death, new republic and yuuzhan vong. light and
dark and good and evil. they're all each other, because each
living thing and everything is the same thing. the force is
one." - Anakin Solo to Jacen Solo (195)
"When you always know what is right, where is freedom? No one
chooses the wrong, Jacen Solo. Uncertainty sets you free."
- Vergere (197)
"The executor released the activation plate and knelt at Jacen's
feet. He lowered his head in obeisance, and offered up the
deactivated lightsabre to Jacen on outstretched palms.
Jacen recognized the handgrip's design.
It was Anakin's.
He looked at Vergere.
She returned his gaze steadily. 'Choose and act.'" (201)
"Jaina was making Ganner painfully aware that she was the
granddaughter of Darth Vader." (215)
"'Nobody's dead and nobody's hurt,' Ganner said coolly, voice as
even as his lightsabre's hum, 'but that can change. Anytime. It's
your call.'
The four Force-invisible white-robes, scattered the small chamber
off balance or off their feet entirely, hesitated. The middle-aged
man stood motionless.
Ganner couldn't restrain the hint of a smile. Not only am I
good at this, he thought reflexively, I do it with
style." (220)
**Ganner discovers that Jacen, thought to be MIA, is alive: "When
he could finally speak, the only word that could pass through his
nerveless mouth was 'Jacen . . .'
'Hi, Ganner,' Jacen said tiredly." (222) **
"[Jacen] wore a long, flowing robe of black so dark that its folds
vanished into formless night. Along his sleeves spidered an
intricate design that glowed with a light of its won, chased in
scarlet and viridian like a network of external arteries that
pulsed light instead of blood. Draped over his shoulders he wore a
surplice of shimmering white on which strange, unidentifiable
sigils wrote themselves in twists of shining gold.
[Ganner] opened his mouth to ask Jacen what kind of stupid masked
ball he was planning to crash in this ridiculous costume, but
before his drug-numbed lips could shape the words, he remembered:
Jacen Solo is a traitor." (231)
"They offer me a shadow of my due respect,' Jacen replied with
regal assurance. "The words mean 'Behold the avatar of the God.' "
"Tchurokk sen Jeedai Ganner! Tchurokk'tiz!"
"TCHUROKK!"
"And they, uh, like me too, huh?"
"They do not like you," Nom Anor interjected, as cheerfully
malicious as a well-fed Hutt. "No one likes you; they
merely honour your willing sacrifice to the True Gods."
"Yeah. My, uh, willing sacrifice. The True Gods. That's right.
So - what are we waiting for?"
"Nothing at all," Nom Anor said. "Let's get this show started,
shall we?" - Jacen, Ganner, and Nom Anor conversing. (244)
"When you start to become who you are, the first thing you learn is
that there is nothing to fear." - Jacen Solo to Ganner Rhysode
(260)
"'You know, I never liked you, Jacen. I thought you were soft.
Wishy-washy. An over-intellectual bleeding heart.'
'I never liked you either.' Ganner looked up to find Jacen
answering his grin with a gentle, knowing smile. 'I thought you
were nothing but a grandstander. A play-acting glory hunter, more
concerned with looking good than with doing good.'
Ganner laughed out loud. 'You were right.'
'So were you.' Jacen held out his hand. 'So: here's our chance to
show the Yuuzhan Vong what a grand-stander and a bleeding heart can
do.'
Ganner took Jacen's hand and gripped it fiercely. 'It'll be a show
they'll never forget.'" (261-262)
"'This is insane!' Nom Anor turned to the warrior commander
at his side. 'Can't you simply blow him up? Gas him?
Something?'" (266)
"Jacen reclined on a couch beast in the coralcraft's cargo stomach,
staring through the clear curve of a corneal port at the vast
noncolour of hyperspace. Vergere sat curled up in a feline repose
on the other side of the room. She might have been napping, but
Jacen doubted it.
He still hadn't seen her sleep.
Every time he looked at her, he remembered coming to the coralcraft
hidden below the Well, remembered finding Nom Anor tied up like a
field-dressed nerf. he remembered how the Yuuzhan Vong executor
had begged to be taken along. 'Leaving me here - that's the same
as murder!'
Jacen had turned his back and walked onto the coralcraft
stone-faced. 'Don't think of it as murder,' he'd said. 'Think of
it as your Blessed Release.'
Once Nom Anor had understood that no plea would help, his pleading
had turned to curses. He'd insisted that only his protection had
allowed either of them to live this long. 'Take her with you, yes,
you vile little traitor,' he spat at Jacen. 'One traitor deserves
another.'
Vergere had answered cheerfully, 'And what did you expect? How was
I to teach treason, had I not learned it already myself?'" (286)
"This is the most valuable lesson one can teach a fanatic: that
fanaticism is self-defeating." - Vergere (291)
"No lesson is truly learned until it has been purchased with pain."
- Vergere (291)
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
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