Matthew Stover

“Hobbie: "Have I told you today how much I really, really hate you?" Janson: "Oh, sure, your lips say 'I hate you' but your eyes say—" Hobbie: "That someday I'll murder you in your sleep?”

“Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars.”

“Pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip, and all that lives will move. To live is to be a slave to pain.”

“In every exchange, Obi-Wan gave ground. It was his way.”

“This truth: that he, the avatar of light, Supreme Master of the Jedi Order, the fiercest, most impeccable, most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known...just-didn't-have it.”

“Now Obi Wan did face him.'Palpatine faced Mace and Agen and Kit and Saesee-four of the greatest swordsmen our order has ever produced. By Himself. Even both of us together wouldn't have a chance.''True,' Yoda said, 'But both of us apart, a chance we might create...”

“Not his penetrating intellect, or his talents with the Force, or his unmatched skills with a lightsaber."-Matthew Stover on Mace Windu”

“I am called a great swordsman because I invented a lethal style; but who is greater, the creator of a killing form—or the master of the classic form?""I'm very flattered that you would consider me a master but really—""Not a master. The master.”

“Which would leave Mace and Agen Kolar- -both among the greatest bladesbeings the Jedi Order has ever produced”

“He could feel the end of the battle approaching, and so could the blur of the Sith he faced in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear. Easily, almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge. Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a half kilometer drop.Out where the shadow's fear's fear made it hesitate. Out where the shadow's fear turned some of it's Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete.Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half.One piece flipped back in through the cut open window. The other tumbled from opening fingers, bounced on the ledge, and fell through the rain towards the distant alleys below.Now the shadow was only Palpatine: old and shrunken, thinning hair bleached white by time and care, face lined with exhaustion. 'For all your power, my lord,you are no Jedi. All you are, my lord,' Mace said evenly, staring past his blade, 'is under arrest.”

“I am also, well… I’m in awe. He’s killed people, and saved people. He’s fought monsters, and he’s fought men who became monsters. He’s saved kingdoms and toppled empires. Now he has set himself against the gods to save a universe… and I used to change his diapers. I used to yell at him to make his bed.”

“Have you had contact with any other survivors?""Only one," the Alderaanian senator said grimly. "Lock onto my coordinates. He's waiting for you.”

“I swear to you on any kind of sacred whateverthefuck you favor: if I live through this I will absolutely start taking your advice.""That'll look nice on your headstone.”

“How can he love being... that? Being what Caine is?""Because he's an asshole," she says. "You must have noticed.”

“Being old enough to know better but still too young to resist mostly sucks.”

“A girl likes to be asked, dumbass.”

“If I have to make moves in her, we'll all get bloody. You, go wake up Raithe. Tell him Hari's waiting to see him. He'll come with you.""Hari?" He frowned like he wasn't sure if he was being kidded. "Of what abbey? In what land?""Hari of Do as You're Told in the land of And Shut the Fuck Up.”

“Life is more a matter of choosing than knowing. He could never know the eventual destination of his path, but he could always choose in which direction to take each step.”

“When you always know what is right, where is freedom? No one chooses the wrong, Jacen Solo. Uncertainty sets you free."-Vergere”

“Oh, sure. What's this supposed to teach me?""Is it what the teacher teaches? Or what the students learns?""What's the difference?""That is, itself, a question worth considering, yes?"-Jacen & Vergere”

“Everything I tell you is a lie."-Vergere”

“This threshhold is mine...Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don't give a damn. None shall pass."-Ganner Rhysode”

“I don't have to stop you. All I have to do is slow you down."-Ganner Rhysode”

“There are some who say that Time is itself a hammer; that each slow second marks another tap that makes big rocks into little rocks, waterfalls into canyons, cliffs into beaches.There are some who say that Time is instead a blade. They see the dance of its razored tip, poised like a venomous snake, forever ready to slay faster than the eye can see.And there are some who say that Time is both hammer and blade.They say the hammer is a sculptor's mallet, and the blade is a sculptor's chisel: that each stroke is a refinement, a perfecting, a discovery of truth and beauty within what would otherwise be blank and lifeless stone.And I name this saying wisdom.”

“I won, goddammit. I beat Kollberg. I beat you. I got everything I goddamn wanted: fame, wealth, power. Shit, I even got the girl.""The problem with happy endings," Tan'elKoth said,"is that nothing is ever truly over.""Fuck that," Hari said."I am living happily ever goddamn after. I am.”

“Anakin.” Obi-Wan’s voice had gone soft, and his hand was warm on Anakin’s arm. “There is no other Jedi I would rather have at my side right now. No other man.”Anakin turned, and found within Obi-Wan’s eyes a depth of feeling he had only rarely glimpsed in all their years together; and the pure uncomplicated love that rose up within him then felt like a promise from the Force itself.“I… I wouldn’t have it any other way, Master.”“I believe,” his onetime Master said with a gently humorous look of astonishment at the words coming out of his mouth, “that you should get used to calling me Obi-Wan.”

“I am not the same man you found that day! The monster you've created has returned, to kill you!”

“... Corellian curses being a synergistic blend of vulgarity, obscenity, and outright blasphemy that were the only things really worth saying when one was in the middle of being blown to monatomic dust.”

“I fear Michaelson not at all. Michaelson is a fiction, you fools. The truth of him is Caine. You do not comprehend the distinction; and so he will destroy you.”

“The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins. It always wins because it is everywhere. It is in the wood that burns in your hearth, and in the kettle on the fire; it is under your chair and under your table and under the sheets on your bed. Walk in the midday sun, and the dark is with you, attached to the soles of your feet. The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.”

“It's not always easy to distinguish between existentialism and a bad mood.”

“ The dark is generous. Its first gift is concealment: our true faces lie in the dark beneath our skins, our true hearts remain shadowed deeper still. But the greatest concealment lies not in protecting our secret truths, but in hiding from the truths of others. The dark protects us from what we dare not know. Its second gift is comforting illusion: the ease of gentle dreams in night’s embrace, the beauty that imagination brings to what would repel in the day’s harsh light. But the greatest of its comforts is the illusion that dark is temporary: that every night brings a new day. Because it’s the day that is temporary. Day is the illusion. Its third gift is the light itself: as days are defined by the nights that divide them, as stars are defined by the infinite black through which they wheel, the dark embraces the light, and brings it forth from the center of its own self. With each victory of the light, it is the dark that wins. The dark is generous, and it is patient. It is the dark that seeds cruelty into justice, that drips contempt into compassion, that poisons love with grains of doubt. The dark can be patient, because the slightest drop of rain will cause those seeds to sprout. The rain will come, and the seeds will sprout, for the dark is the soil in which they grow, and it is the clouds above them, and it waits behind the star that gives them light. The dark’s patience is infinite. Eventually, even stars burn out. The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins. It always wins because it is everywhere. It is in the wood that burns in your hearth, and in the kettle on the fire; it is under your chair and under your table and under the sheets on your bed. Walk in the midday sun, and the dark is with you, attached to the soles of your feet. The brightest light casts the darkest shadow. The dark is generous and it is patient and it always wins – but in the heart of its strength lies its weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back. Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars.”

“The truth is always greater than the words we use to describe it.”