The Emperor's Soul

True art was more than beauty; it was more than technique. It was not just imitation.

It was boldness, it was contrast, it was subtlety.

Copy an image over and over on a stack of paper, Shai thought, and eventually the lower sheets will bear the same image, pressed down. Deep within.

A warrior kept moving, like a river.

“People,” Shai said, rising to fetch another seal, “by nature attempt to exercise power over what is around them.

He hadn’t understood. There was rarely an obvious branching point in a person’s life. People changed slowly, over time. You didn’t take one step, then find yourself in a completely new location. You first took a little step off a path to avoid some rocks. For a while, you walked alongside the path, but then you wandered out a little way to step on softer soil. Then you stopped paying attention as you drifted farther and farther away. Finally, you found yourself in the wrong city, wondering why the signs on the roadway hadn’t led you better

Being emperor makes it difficult for any man to live a normal life, I suspect.

boredom made people easy to manipulate.

Each person was a puzzle.

a man who was honest and clever was always, always more difficult to scam than someone who was both dishonest and clever.

Being honest did not make one naive. A dishonest fool and an honest fool were equally easy to scam; you just went about it in different ways.