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"Strange place for a historian, out there at the edge of everything." "Centers are defined by edges." 'Whatever the fuck that means."

— Empire's Ruin by Brian Staveley (Ashes of the unhewn throne, #1) (Page 107)

Death resists all comparison and simile. This is something I learned in my first year at Rassambur. To say death is like a land beyond the sea or like an endless scream is to miss the point. Death is not like anything. There is no craft analogous to Ananshael's work. The truest response to his mystery and majesty is silence. On the other hand, to remain silent is to encourage the fantasies of the uninitiate—skulls brimming with blood, graveyard orgies, infants dangling like impractical chandeliers from the ceilings of candlelit caverns—and so maybe an imperfect analogy is better than none at all. Take a grape. The purple skin is muted, as if by mist or fog. Polish it, or not then pop it into your mouth. The flesh is firm beneath the cool, smooth skin. If you find yourself becoming aroused, stop. Start imagining over. The grape is a grape. Imagine it properly, or this will not work. Now. What does the grape taste like? A grape tastes like a grape? Of course not. Until you bite the grape, it has no taste. It might as well be a stone lifted from the cold current of some river in autumn: a smooth, chill orb, reticent, flavorless. You could hold it trapped between your palate and tongue forever, with only the faintest hint of juice at the tiny breach where it was plucked from the stem. You are like that grape—plump with slick, rich sweetness, with wet purple life. The truth of life is the grape's truth: only when jaws bite down, when the skin splits, when the sun-cold flesh explodes onto the tongue does it matter. Without the moment of its own destruction, the grape is just a smooth, colorful stone. Without the foreknowledge of the woman who holds it in her hand, her anticipation, before it even passes her lips, of the mangled skin and the sweet life draining over the tongue, the grape would hold no savor.

— Skullsworn by Brian Staveley (Page 5 - 6)