Czerwona siostra

"You didn`t understand when she sent you away. And you don`t understand now. People lie, Nona, they steal, they cheat, they`re unfaithful. People hurt you, they let you down. They sell you out."
"It doesn`t mean I have to be like that."

"There are things that can`t be bought or sold," Nona said.
Clera shook her head. "Some would say everything has its price, and that it`s often surprisingly cheap. Others that if a thing cannot be bought, it has no value."
"What about friendship?" Nona asked.
"Ah." Clera lay back, settling herself to sleep. "There you have to be careful."

The truth is a weapon and lies are a necessary shield.

After thirty more repetitions of the same block and same cut Nona tried another variation.
"No." Sister Tallow adjusted Nona`s arm again. "The muscles need to learn it, not the mind. There need to be patterns your body can fall back on when there`s no time for thinking. Once those are bedded into you then you start to improvise."

You may be called upon to enforce the authority and the will of the church. It would be better if you did so in a manner that allows the transgressor to see the error of their ways rather than the contents of their body. The sword is a final solution.

She knew five dozen ways to kill, she knew them with a lover`s intimacy, and in the execution perhaps lust also played its role -- for what is lust but a hunger? And hunger must be fed.
Any weapon begs use. The blade itself incites to violence. And those who mistake the red children of Sweet Mercy for anything other than a weapon are fools of their own breed.

Your death has not been waiting for your arrival at the appointed hour: it has, for all the years of your life, been racing towards you with the fierce velocity of time`s arrow. It cannot be evaded, it cannot be bargained with, deflected or placated. All that is given to you is the choice: meet it with open eyes and peace in your heart, go gentle to your reward. Or burn bright, take up arms, and fight the bitch.

There is, in the act of destruction, a beauty which we try to deny, and a joy which we cannot. Children build to knock down, and though we may grow around it, that need runs in us, deeper than our blood.

There`s no such thing as prophecy, Nona. Or rather there is but it`s madmen that tell them, or people who were once listened to for their wisdom and have found themselves growing old and unwise yet still wanting to be heard. There`s no magic in it. Macig doesn`t work that way.

A high priest can be stupid, he can be greedy, he can be wrong; but what he can`t be is purchased.

People can be friends without saying so.

a murderer too rich to pay for his crimes

"Apple is a Grey Sister," the abbess said. Nona heard her sit down. "She wears many guises, and she herself would tell you to trust none of them. Only remember that she is your sister, as true to you as you are to the Ancestor."

The hardest lesson I ever learned was that every bad thing you see a friend do to someone else they will some day do to you.

"Trust, Nona. Trust is the most insidious of poisons. Trust sidesteps all of your precautions." Behind the nun Clera rolled her eyes. "So give your trust sparingly. Or better still, not at all."

It`s harder to forgive someone else your own sins than those uniquely theirs. Much harder.

I`d rather mend people than break them.

"We`re friends then?" she asked without preamble, watching Nona`s eyes.
"'Friend' can be a dangerous word," Nona said.
Clera laughed. "Friend? Really?"
"It is if you meant it." Nona didn`t smile. She thought of Amondo and of Saida. 'Friend' was a bond. Much of what people did, how they acted, confused Nona. But 'friend' she understood. A friend you would die for. Or kill for.
"Well I mean it." Clera let her own smile slip.
"Then we are."

Sufficient speed makes every other aspect of combat irrelevant. If your opponent is a statue it doesn`t matter how strong or skilled they might be -- find their throat or an eye and make an end of them. Speed is the way of the sisterhood.