01UndatedAnd that’s how it is in this world, boy. Start a tale, just a little tale that should fade and die—take your eye off it for just a moment and when you turn back it’s grown big enough to grab you up in its teeth and shake you. That’s how it is. All our lives are tales. Some spread, and grow in the telling. Others are just told between us and the gods, muttered back and forth behind our days, but those tales grow too and shake us just as fierce.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
02UndatedWhen you become a father, it changes you." Snorri spoke towards the fire’s glow. "You see the world in new ways. Those who are not changed were not properly men to begin with.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
03UndatedOut 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 it now, or you'll die a young man.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
04UndatedWhat saves us all are the deeds of fools as often as the acts of the wise.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
05UndatedThere is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are gone.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
06UndatedMen who’ve made choices always feel they own their destiny. Few ever think to ask who shaped and offered up those choices. Who dangles the carrot they think they’ve chosen to follow.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
07UndatedI'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 you tell them to yourself enough times, even what's right before your eyes will bend itself to the falsehood.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
08UndatedGenuine surprise is a great help when faced with an unwelcome duty. Of course, when it’s the paying of debts you’re forgetting, that can lead to broken fingers. And worse. I guess it’s a form of lying— lying to oneself. And I’m very good at falsehoods. They often say the best liars half-believe their lies— which makes me the very best because if I repeat a lie often enough I can end up believing it entirely, no half measures involved!Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
09UndatedIt doesn't pay to trust a lettered man in the road, Brothers, their heads are full of other man's ideas.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
10UndatedBrother 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 somebody else's blood on his shirt. You could trust him to lie, to cheat, to steal, and to watch your back. You couldn't trust his eyes though. He had kind eyes, and you couldn't trust them.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
11UndatedTo err is human, to forgive is divine... but I’m only a cardinal and cardinals are human, so rather than forgiving you I’m going to err towards beating you with this stick.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
12UndatedWe all practice self-deception to a degree; no man can handle complete honesty without being cut at each turn. There's not enough room in a man's head for sanity alongside each grief, each worry, each terror that he owns. I’m well used to burying such things in a dark cellar and moving on.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
13UndatedIt’s often said that cowards make the best torturers. Cowards have good imaginations, imaginations that torment them with all the worst stuff of nightmare, all the horrors that could befall them. This provides an excellent arsenal when it comes to inflicting misery on others. And their final qualification is that they understand the fears of their victim better than the victim does himself.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
14UndatedSometimes our worst fears aren't realized - though in my experience it's only to make room for the fears our imagination was insufficient to house.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
15UndatedThere are no other choices for you, Prince Jalan, and when there are no choices all men are equally brave.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
16UndatedMemory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man’s memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
18UndatedMemories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you'll find an edge to cut you.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
19UndatedI want her beyond reason. I need to own, consume, worship, devour. What I've made of her in my mind cannot live in flesh.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
21UndatedWhen 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 up to the moment the first opportunity to weasel out of the deal presents itself.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
22UndatedI remember the stink of corruption. It had a kind of sweetness to it, a sweetness that'd make you want to hurl.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
23UndatedI’ve never seen a man who understands so little about women and yet is so led about by them.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
24UndatedI 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 are made.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
