Mark Lawrence

Quotes

• “It’s often said that cowards make the best torturers. Cowards have good imaginations, imaginations that torment them wit...”
• “He broke off his explanation, seeing in his daughter's eyes the exact moment that a child first understands there are li...”
• “For the longest time I studied revenge to the exclusion of all else. I built my first torture chamber in the dark vaults...”
• “Never having been troubled by a conscience before, I was far from sure what to expect of one, and so when for a minute o...”
• “Brother Row you could trust to make a long shot with a short bow. You could trust him to come out of a knife fight with ...”
• “Cold has its own taste. It tastes of a bitten tongue. It coils around you, a living thing, a beast that means to kill yo...”
• “We all practice self-deception to a degree; no man can handle complete honesty without being cut at each turn. There's n...”
• “Memory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man’s memories and ...”
• “People always want to know things . . . until they hear them, and then it's too late. Knowledge is a rug of a certain si...”
• “When you've committed yourself to violence it takes an almost inhuman effort to stop short. It's one of those things tha...”
• “I'm a good liar. A great one. And to be a great liar you have to live your lies, to believe them, to the point that when...”
• “I've been known to be contrary. When something pushes me, I shove back. Even if the one doing the pushing is me. It woul...”
• “Better a long ignoble life of shallow pleasures than a short stab at heroism, ending with a short stab. And just because...”
• “Lucifer spoke thus. Pride took him from heaven, though he sat at God's right hand.' Her voice grew faint, the hint of a ...”
• “When a course of action is forced upon you it’s best to accept it with grace and milk it for whatever you can get, right...”
• “Every star, turning in the black depth of heaven, burns for no better reason than that humanity raised its face to look....”
• “Sometimes I wished I could cut away old memories and let the wind take them. If a sharp knife could pare away the weakne...”
• “Revenge is a business of calculation, best served cold. Rescue holds more of sacrifice, suicidal danger, and all manner ...”
• “Some men are too dull to feel what might happen. Others torture themselves with maybes and populate their dreams with ho...”
• “Men who’ve made choices always feel they own their destiny. Few ever think to ask who shaped and offered up those choice...”
• “When you become a father, it changes you." Snorri spoke towards the fire’s glow. "You see the world in new ways. Those w...”
• “There is something brittle in me that will break before it bends. Perhaps if the [the enemy] had brought a smaller army ...”
• “To err is human, to forgive is divine... but I’m only a cardinal and cardinals are human, so rather than forgiving you I...”
• “A warrior fears the battle he missed. More than any fight he can make his own, he fears the fight that’s gone, that ende...”
• “A book is as dangerous as any journey you might take. The person who closes the back cover may not be the same one that ...”
• “It's shame that gets us killed. Shame is the anchor, the heaviest burden to carry from the battlefield. Fortunately sham...”
• “The way I’d put it,” said Makin, “is that Rike can’t make an omelet without wading thigh deep in the blood of chickens a...”
• “I’m a liar and a cheat and a coward, but I will never, ever, let a friend down. Unless of course not letting them down r...”
• “Out here you need to live in the moments. Watch the world. You're a young man, Jal, a child who's refused to grow up. Do...”
• “I can help you, Jorge. I can give you back your self. I can give you your will.' He held out his hand, palm open. 'Free ...”
• “Sometimes our worst fears aren't realized - though in my experience it's only to make room for the fears our imagination...”
• “Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held ...”
• “Gomst's mouth framed a 'no', but every other muscle in him said 'yes'. You'd think priests would be better liars, what w...”
• “Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you'll find...”
• “I have been too young to know, and I have been too old to care. It’s in that oh so narrow slice between that memories ar...”
• “There is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are...”
• “We die a little every day and by degrees we’re reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same s...”
• “It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the ...”
• “Keep still and your troubles find you. I might not have known much about the unborn, but I sure as hell knew about runni...”
• “I want her beyond reason. I need to own, consume, worship, devour. What I've made of her in my mind cannot live in flesh...”
• “Still, perhaps that's all lives are, all the world is, a collision of vast conflagrations, each sparked from nothing.”
• “Part of the art of survival as a coward is not letting things get to the point where that cowardice is exposed.”
• “Nothing can be cut away. Even the worst of our memories is part of the foundation that keeps us in the world.”
• “There are no other choices for you, Prince Jalan, and when there are no choices all men are equally brave.”
• “I've never had much use for religion, except when it comes to swearing or begging for mercy.”
• “I’ve never seen a man who understands so little about women and yet is so led about by them.”
• “You would think it best to save your breath for running, but I often find screaming helps.”
• “It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears.”
• “Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak.”
• “It’s always better to sit on your dignity in private than to stand on it in public.”