MLMark Lawrence

95 collected words

Mark Lawrence

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

All the best secrets are told at night.

Mark Lawrence / quote

02Undated

At the dockside I was pleasantly surprised to find the North wasn't all hairy men in animal skins. There was also hairy women in animal skins.

Mark Lawrence / quote

03Undated

For the longest time I studied revenge to the exclusion of all else. I built my first torture chamber in the dark vaults of imagination. Lying on bloody sheets in the Healing Hall I discovered doors within my mind that I’d not found before, doors that even a child of nine knows should not be opened. Doors that never close again. I threw them wide.

Mark Lawrence / quote

04Undated

Still, perhaps that's all lives are, all the world is, a collision of vast conflagrations, each sparked from nothing.

Mark Lawrence / quote

05Undated

Better a long ignoble life of shallow pleasures than a short stab at heroism, ending with a short stab. And just because one man plays another doesn’t always mean that it’s not the right direction for both of them.

Mark Lawrence / quote

06Undated

The enemy of my enemy may be my friend … of course the friend of my friend is often a jerk.

Mark Lawrence / quote

07Undated

Never having been troubled by a conscience before, I was far from sure what to expect of one, and so when for a minute or two each day at dawn a voice began to whisper to me to be a better man, I decided the shock of recent events had finally woken mine. My conscience had a name— Baraqel. I didn’t like him much.

Mark Lawrence / quote

08Undated

Battles are all about strategy, and strategy pivots on priorities. Since my priorities were Prince Jalan, Prince Jalan, and Prince Jalan, with “looking good” a distant fourth, I took the opportunity to resume running away. I find that the main thing about success is the ability to act in the moment. A hero attacks in the moment; a good coward runs in it. The rest of the world waits for the next moment and ends up as crow food.

Mark Lawrence / quote

09Undated

It's shame that gets us killed. Shame is the anchor, the heaviest burden to carry from the battlefield. Fortunately shame was an affliction I'd never suffered from.

Mark Lawrence / quote

10Undated

...and an edge that could cut a truth from a lie.

Mark Lawrence / quote

11Undated

Gomst's mouth framed a 'no', but every other muscle in him said 'yes'. You'd think priests would be better liars, what with their jobs and all.

Mark Lawrence / quote

12Undated

You can win the victories you seek, Jorg. But only if you find better reasons to want them.

Mark Lawrence / quote

13Undated

It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war.

Mark Lawrence / quote

14Undated

Nothing can be cut away. Even the worst of our memories is part of the foundation that keeps us in the world.

Mark Lawrence / quote

15Undated

We die a little every day and by degrees we’re reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars.

Mark Lawrence / quote

16Undated

Those were great big angry men with sharp swords actually wanting to cut pieces off me. It’s not until you’ve seen a red gaping wound and all the complex little bits inside a man all broken up and sliced open, and known that they weren’t ever getting back together again, and vomited your last two meals over the rocks . . . it’s not until then that you understand the business of swords properly and, if you’re a sensible man you vow to have nothing to do with it ever again.

Mark Lawrence / quote

17Undated

Sometimes the only option is to raise the stakes, to throw yourself the other way, to force your opponent further down the path they've chosen, further than they might want to go.

Mark Lawrence / quote

18Undated

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 will has to be taken,' I said.

Mark Lawrence / quote

19Undated

It’s always better to sit on your dignity in private than to stand on it in public.

Mark Lawrence / quote

20Undated

You would think it best to save your breath for running, but I often find screaming helps.

Mark Lawrence / quote

21Undated

Keep still and your troubles find you. I might not have known much about the unborn, but I sure as hell knew about running!

Mark Lawrence / quote

22Undated

A sensible man may fear certain possibilities, but don’t let fear turn possibility into certainty.

Mark Lawrence / quote

23Undated

We wrap up our violent and mysterious world in a pretense of understanding. We paper over the voids of our comprehension with science and religion, and make believe that order has been imposed. And, for the most of it, the fiction works. We skim across the 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