The collection / 95 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01Undated

Running ain't no bad thing. Leastways if you run in the right direction.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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02Undated

We’re built of contradictions, all of us. It’s those opposing forces that give us strength, like an arch, each block pressing the next. Give me a man whose parts are all aligned in agreement and I’ll show you madness. We walk a narrow path, insanity to each side. A man without contradictions to balance him will soon veer off.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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03Undated

Lucifer spoke thus. Pride took him from heaven, though he sat at God's right hand.' Her voice grew faint, the hint of a whisper. 'In the end pride is the only evil, the root of all sins.''Pride is all I have.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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04Undated

No man should go to Valhalla with brothel rash.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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05Undated

Death was kind.” He drew a sharp breath. “But no father should have to give such a kindness to his child.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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06Undated

Let's go to Valhalla with the sun on our faces.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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07Undated

I've never had much use for religion, except when it comes to swearing or begging for mercy.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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08Undated

People always want to know things . . . until they hear them, and then it's too late. Knowledge is a rug of a certain size, and the world is larger. It's not what remains uncovered at the edges that should worry you, rather what is swept beneath.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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09Undated

When they killed him, Mother wouldn't hold her peace, so they slit her throat. I was stupid then, being only nine, and I fought to save them both. But the thorns held me tight. I've learned to appreciate thorns since. The thorns taught me the game. They let me understand what all those grim and serious men who've fought the Hundred War have yet to learn. You can only win the game when you understand that it IS a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him loose them all.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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10Undated

Tell me, tutor,' I said. 'Is revenge a science, or an art?

Mark Lawrence / quote

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11Undated

I’ll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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12Undated

Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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13Undated

Some men are too dull to feel what might happen. Others torture themselves with maybes and populate their dreams with horrors more terrible than their worst enemy could inflict upon them.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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14Undated

We can’t be trapped by fear. Lives lived within such walls are just slower deaths.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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15Undated

A warrior fears the battle he missed. More than any fight he can make his own, he fears the fight that’s gone, that ended without him, that no feat of arms can change.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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16Undated

There is something brittle in me that will break before it bends. Perhaps if the [the enemy] had brought a smaller army I might have had the sense to run. But he overdid it.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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17Undated

It's an irony of our times that men seeking peace must make war.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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18Undated

War, my friends, is a thing of beauty.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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19Undated

That's my secret and my shame. I'm Nona Grey, war is in my veins, and the screams of my enemies are music to me.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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20Undated

There is, in the act of destruction, a beauty which we try to deny, and a joy which we cannot. Children build to knock down, and though we may grow around it, that need runs in us, deeper than our blood.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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21Undated

There is, in the act of destruction, a beauty which we try to deny, and a joy which we cannot. Children build to knock down, and though we may grow around it, that need runs in is, deeper than our blood.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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22Undated

Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held to be a character flaw.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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23Undated

Cold has its own taste. It tastes of a bitten tongue. It coils around you, a living thing, a beast that means to kill you, not with wrath, not with tooth nor claw, but with the mercy of surrender, with the kindness of letting you go gentle into the long night after such a burden of pain and misery.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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24Undated

Men who are certain of everything - well perhaps they are not men at all.

Mark Lawrence / quote

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