After the meal was ready, the two sat around the table. Oliver opened the bottle of wine, but he showed no intention of offering anyone a drink. He looked as though he wanted to get himself drunk.
"You're a hopeless pessimist. You never see hope. If it weren't for the powerful sense of mission driving you, you'd be in worse shape than Constantine. You understand more deeply than he does just how terrible this world is."
As Schiller took out a pair of chopsticks, he said, "You need strong, continuous motivation before you can act. You need a powerful shock to your worldview, something that truly shakes you, before you can find the strength to go further."
"The misery in Mexico was once your greatest source of motivation. You were deeply shaken by the terrible sight of people at the bottom of Mexican society going hungry and lacking even adequate clothing, so you had an incredibly strong drive to fight for them."
"But as your understanding of the country's lower classes deepened, you inevitably came to understand one phenomenon: the poor hurting one another. You knew the Revolutionary Army's division wasn't merely the result of someone stirring up trouble from outside. They themselves didn't understand unity. They were selfish, always fixated on the interests of their own little patch of land, even foolish beyond redemption."
"You were deeply disappointed by this, yet you felt there was nothing you could do, because that was simply human nature. They had spent so many years in poverty and desperation. When poor people suddenly became rich, they either became endlessly greedy, using every means possible to gain more, or they indulged in comfort, wanting only to rest on their laurels and do nothing."
"You told them that wouldn't work, but they refused to listen.