“You can never have too many knives, his father had told him. Unless they're pointed at you, and by people who don't like you much. ”

“If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?”

“One last chance. That’s all I’m asking.” He had lost count of the number of last chances he had wasted. “Just one more. God!” He had never believed in God for an instant. “Fates!” He had never believed in Fates either. “Anyone!” He had never believed in anything much beyond the next drink. “Just one… more… chance.”“Alright. One more.”Cosca blinked. “God? Is that… you?”Someone chuckled. A woman’s voice, and a sharp, mocking, most ungodlike sort of a chuckle. “You can kneel if you like, Cosca.”

“It's hard to be done a favor by a man you hate. It's hard to hate him so much afterwards. Losing an enemy can be worse than losing a friend, if you've had him for long enough.”

“One day you're something, so promising and full o' dares, so big the world's too small a place to hold you. Then, 'fore you know it, you're old, and you realise all them things you had in mind you'll never get to. All them doors you felt too big to fit through have already shut. Only one left open and it leads to nothing but nothing.”

“Knives,’ muttered Calder, ‘and threats, and bribes, and war?’Bayaz’ eyes shone with the lamplight. ‘Yes?’‘What kind of a fucking wizard are you?’‘The kind you obey.”

“Sometimes it doesn't matter too much what choice you make, as long as you make it quick and stick to it.”