An excerpt from Brandon Sanderson's novel, Warbreaker (pp. 490-491 in the hardcover version). It seems fitting for my Heroes series.
Vasher shrugged in the darkness. “Priests are always easy to blame. They make convenient scapegoats—after all, anyone with a strong faith different from your own must either be a crazy zealot or a lying manipulator.”
Vivenna flushed yet again.
Vasher stopped in the street, then turned to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say it that way.” He cursed, turning and walking again. “I told you I’m no good at this.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m getting used to it.”
He nodded in the darkness, seeming distracted.
He is a good man, she thought. Or, at least, an earnest man trying to be good. A part of her felt foolish for making yet another judgment.
Yet she knew she couldn’t live—couldn’t interact—without making some judgments. So she judged Vasher. Not as she’d judged Denth, who had said amusing things and given her what she’d expected to see. She judged Vasher by what she had seen him do. Cry when he saw a child being held captive. Return that child to her father, his only reward an opportunity to make a rough plea for peace. Living with barely any money, dedicating himself to preventing a war.
He was rough. He was brutal. He had a terrible temper. But he was a good man. And, walking beside him, she felt safe for the first time in weeks.
