Mark Lawrence

“They say that time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”

“Some men name their swords. I've always found that a strange affection. If I had to call it something I would all it "Sharp”

“You're going now?" Makin asked, putting down his bottle-in-a-basket."Well, unless you want to drink till we're all sunburnt and maudlin and then declare undying love for each other and part with drunken hugs?" I said.”

“I watched her backside as she went. I thought perhaps I wouldn't die if I could still find time to watch a well-crafted bottom”

“Beside me Makin looked to have retreated into that closed and lonely place that we all reach if we keep digging. Dig a little deeper than that and you're in hell of a sudden.”

“If the sins of the flesh ever got old I didn't ever want enough years on me to know it.”

“So what was that about?" Makin asked, striding up behind."They shot my idiot," I said.”

“Makin once told me that a man who's got no fear is missing a friend.”

“A Dark time comes. My time.If it offends you.Stop Me.”

“She had the eyes of everyone who ever cared.”

“He made his own silent screams then and tried to die. But I held him there.”

“The fascination that lives on the keenest edge, and sparkles on the sharpest point, also gathers in depths of a fall.”

“Jesu, Rike, you been gargling rat piss again?”

“That was just how we spoke. Every conversation a game of poker, every line a bet or a raise, a bluff or a call.”

“The boy, not 'my son.' I didn't miss that edge.”

“Hate will keep you alive where love fails”

“There is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are gone.”

“Memory 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.”

“Orrin of Arrow might have given them bread. He might have resolved to change this place. I just walk through it. Later I will scrape it from my shoes.”

“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.”

“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 and wearing their entrails as a necklace.”

“When I saw this gorge on the map, I thought to myself, 'what a godforsaken spot.' And that's when it occurred to me what to bring for barter. I brought you God.”

“This is where the wise man turns away. This is where the holy kneel and call on God. These are the last miles, my brothers. Don't look to me to save you. Don't think I will not spend you. Run if you have the wit. Pray if you have the soul. Stand your ground if courage is yours. But don't follow me.Follow me, and I will break your heart.”

“Memories 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.”

“Is this going to be one of those times when you pretend not to have a plan until the last moment? And then turn out to really not have one?- Sir Makin to King Jorg”

“And what makes us human is that sometimes we snap. And in that moment of release we're closer to gods than we know.”

“Man, dog, horse. With enough hurt we all sound the same.”

“Weakness is a contagion, one breath of it can corrupt a man whole and entire. Now though, even with all the evil in me, I don't know if I could teach such lessons to a son of mine.”

“As 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.”

“Some truths should perhaps be left unsaid. Some doors unopened. An angel once told me to let go of the ills I held too close, to let go of the flaws that shaped me.”

“A man is made of memories. It is all we are. Captured moments, the smell of a place, scenes played out time and again on a small stage. We are memories, strung on storylines--the tales we tell ourselves about ourselves, falling through our lives into tomorrow.”

“Sometimes I feel the need of an avalanche within me.”

“When all you have to look at is white, given time you will see a symphony in shades of pale.”

“Sometimes the world slows and you notice every small thing, as if you stood between two beats of eternity's heart.”

“The world eats good men for breakfast.”

“There's a purity to the struggle to reach a peak. You leave your world behind and take only what you need. For a creature like me there is nothing closer to redemption.”

“A man can drown in shades of grey.”

“I’d be happier on a horse,” Makin said.“I’d be happier on a giant mountain goat,” I said. “One that shat diamonds. Until we find some, we’re walking.”

“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.”

“It never pays to walk blindly. Especially not in your own castle where familiarity hides so much - even when we have the eyes to see.”

“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.”

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

“It is purity of spirit that will keep corruption from the flesh”

“That's not a plan. That's a way to get a death so famously stupid that they'll be laughing about it in alehouses for a hundred years to come," Makin said.”

“Hold to a thing long enough, a secret, a desire, maybe a lie, and it will shape you.”

“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.”

“Assassination is murder with a touch more precision. Brother Sim is precise.”

“I wanted to go home and if Hell rose up to stop me, it would make me desire it more.”

“I dropped the head and kicked it into the crowd. I say “kicked” but in truth it’s a bad idea to kick a head. I learned that years ago, a lesson that cost me two broken toes. What you want to do is shove the head with the side of your foot, like you’re throwing it. It’s going to roll anyhow so you don’t need that much force. See, the thing about severed heads is the owner no longer has any interest in minimizing the force of the blow, or any ability to do so for that matter. When you kick somebody in the head as you do from time to time, they tend to be actively trying to move themselves out of the way and the contact is lessened. A severed head is a dead weight, even if it’s watching you.And that exhausts my insights into the kicking of severed heads. Admittedly it’s more than most people have to offer on the subject but there were Mayans who knew a lot more than I do. That of course is a whole different ball-game.”

“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.”