Quotes from Fuyumi Ono

It doesn't take any effort to dream. It's a lot easier than looking at the problems in front of you and figuring out what you're going to do about them. But all you're doing is putting your problems up on a shelf for later, right? That doesn't make them go away.

And that's when I realized that there's really two ways people cry. You cry when you're sorry for yourself, and then you cry when you are really sad. The tears you cry for yourself? Those are kid tears. You're crying because you want somebody to help you or pick you up. Your mom, your dad, the old lady next door... anyone.

When people felt pain time and time again, they came to fear that pain above all other things. So they tried to ignore it, to forget it was happening, as a way of bearing it. And pretty soon, they would come to feel like they'd accomplished something just by doing that -- even though nothing had changed.

I think that once you're born, the thing you have to do is find out who you are and live that life as well as you can. You can't spend your time wondering how things would have been if you were someone different.

People will live their lives with or without a king to command them. It is the king who cannot live without his people.

Palaces are built on the people's bones. To tell the truth, the masses would be better off without kingdoms, which is why it takes a gifted ruler to tell just the right lies so they never realize it.

I'd rather be in danger with you than be safe without you.

A throne is always paid for in blood. The king of En had told her that once. Even should a king's ascension be bloodless as a gift from Heaven, to hold onto one's throne invariably meant that blood must flow -- as it had at the beginning, in the fight against the false king's armies, and the quelling of civil war, and the execution of criminals. Luckily, the fighting part was easy for Yoko. All she had to do was resist the temptation to run away.

It wasn't that she didn't want to die. Nor was it that she wanted to live. She just didn't want to give up.

I do not need a scabbard to sheathe my mind.

There are some things in this world you can never get back... There's no reclaiming that piece of the past. Don't you think it'd be better to abandon it completely and consider instead what you did wrong and learn from it?

Taiki was watching the kings talk, feeling the kind of happiness that can only come after a long sorrow.

She couldn't live in denial of her own humanity.

The part of her that should have been disgusted was numb.

What's the difference in wanting someone you don't like to vanish and dreaming about a world in which they don't exist? They're just two ways of saying the same thing.

If it were possible to treat everyone well, then anybody would do that. But sometimes we have to decide on an order. Liking everyone the same means that you don't like any one person. At least that's what I think.

You know, Youko. When you don't know which choice is the best, then you should choose the path you ought to take, rather than the one you wish for. You're going to regret the path not taken. But regrets being more or less equal, better the one where the regret is even a bit less." - Rakushun.