01UndatedSometimes I wished I could cut away old memories and let the wind take them. If a sharp knife could pare away the weakness of those days, I would slice until nothing but the hard lessons remained.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
02UndatedEvery star, turning in the black depth of heaven, burns for no better reason than that humanity raised its face to look. Every great deed needs to be witnessed. Go out there and do something great.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
03UndatedI’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 requires honesty, fair play, or bravery.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
05UndatedIt’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
06UndatedA book is as dangerous as any journey you might take. The person who closes the back cover may not be the same one that opened the front one. Treat them with respect.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
08UndatedAfter all, that’s all a man really needs: a big city full of sin and sleaze, and a chance.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
10UndatedThere's a problem with continually stamping down on the least sensible instincts that drive men to recklessly endanger themselves. Even the most reasonable and level-headed of us have only limited space to store such unwanted emotion. You keep putting the stuff away, shoving it to the back of your mind but like an over-full cupboard there comes a point where you try to cram one more thing into it and all of a sudden something snaps, the catch gives, the door bursts open and everything inside spills out on top of you.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
11UndatedThe road forgets. Make your life a journey, keep moving toward what you want, leave behind anything that's too heavy to carry.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
12UndatedThe holy stone looked for all the world like a small iron pineapple, its surface divided into squares by deep grooves, a tarnished silver-steel handle or lever held tight to the side. In ancient times the pineapple was ever the symbol of welcome, though the church used the objects in a different way. Apparently, each theological student of good family and destined for high office was given one on beginning their training and forbidden from pulling the lever on pain of excommunication. A test of obedience they called it. A test of curiosity I called it. Clearly the church wanted bishops who lacked the imagination for exploration and questioning.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
13UndatedWhen you've committed yourself to violence it takes an almost inhuman effort to stop short. It's one of those things that once you've started need to be finished, rather like coitus, interrupting that's a sin, even the priests say so.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
14UndatedThe way I’d put it,” said Makin, “is that Rike can’t make an omelet without wading thigh deep in the blood of chickens and wearing their entrails as a necklace.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
15UndatedPart of the art of survival as a coward is not letting things get to the point where that cowardice is exposed.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
16UndatedWe wrap up our violent and mysterious world in a pretence of understanding. We paper over the voids in our comprehension with science or religion, and make believe that order has been imposed. And, for the most of it, the fiction works. We skim across surfaces, heedless of the depths below. Dragonflies flitting over a lake, miles deep, pursuing erratic paths to pointless ends. Until that moment when something from the cold unknown reaches up to take us. The biggest lies we save for ourselves. We play a game in which we are gods, in which we make choices, and the current follows in our wake. We pretend a separation from the wild. Pretend that a man's control runs deep, that civilization is more than a veneer, that reason will be our companion in dark places.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
17UndatedAnything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
18UndatedRevenge is a business of calculation, best served cold. Rescue holds more of sacrifice, suicidal danger, and all manner of other madness that should have me running in the opposite direction.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
19UndatedThorn stood without motion, for only when you are truly still can you be the centre. She stood without sound, for only silent can you listen. She stood without fear, for only the fearless can understand their peril.Thorn waited. Fearless as flowers, bright, fragile, open to the sky. Brave, as only those who’ve already lost can be.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
20UndatedAs a child there's a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one...each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
21UndatedHe broke off his explanation, seeing in his daughter's eyes the exact moment that a child first understands there are limits on what her parents can do, rather than just limits on what they choose to do. He knelt before her in a moment's silence, somewhat less than he had been just seconds before, and Emy a half step closer to the woman she would one day become.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
22UndatedPerhaps I just wanted to know what it was that I wanted. Maybe that is all that growing up means.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
23UndatedI've been known to be contrary. When something pushes me, I shove back. Even if the one doing the pushing is me. It would have been easy to gut him then and there. Satisfying. But the need was too urgent. I felt pushed.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
24UndatedAssassination is murder with a touch more precision. Brother Sim is precise.Mark Lawrence / quote ↗
