30 Quotes by Martha Brockenbrough

The kiss: It felt like light rising through them. It was a memory and it was a promise, an enigma and a wonder. It was music. A conversation. A flight. A true story. And it was theirs.

Why choose fear over love? In what world does that make sense?

People were funny about things they couldn’t see. If they couldn’t see it, it wasn’t there. Or at the least, it didn’t affect them. But the world didn’t work that way, did it? There were things all around that you couldn’t see, and these things had power.

Game or no, she would someday die, as all living beings did. But that wasn’t the tragedy. Nor was there tragedy in being a pawn. All souls are, if not of eternal beings, then as pawns of their own bodies. The game, whatever shape it takes, lasts only as long as the body holds out. The tragedy, every time, is choosing something other than love.

She sent Death a thought, one she hoped would be her final gift. The Game means something only because we lose. That is your gift to humans. So thank you.

She’d known it her whole life. It was the one thing she was certain of. That someday, everyone she loved would die. Everything she loved would crumble to ruin. It was the price of life. It was the price of love. It was the only ending for every true story.

We do not choose whom we love... We can only choose how well.

But don’t you remember being a child?” he said. “How much simpler and clearer everything was? Sometimes I think they’re smarter than any of us when it comes to love. They don’t doubt it. Not for a second. And they don’t doubt that they’re loved in return. Something happens to us when we grow up. Misfortune tramples us. We forget how it feels to simply love without throwing the whole mess of life into the stew. We trade love for fear. I’m not willing to do that anymore.

If life didn’t end... there would be no need for me to choose love in the face of death is the ultimate act of courage. I am the joy, but you are the meaning. Together, we make humanity more than it otherwise might have been.