"I do not worship any gods myself, though I guess some are real in their own ways. I have to believe that all of them get regular belly-laughs because one of them was ingenious to create human sexuality. Even greed and lust for power do not come close to generating the stupidities that us being male and female do. But by giving it half a thought I can think of as many glories that spring from the same dichotomy."

"Like most warlords he doesn’t let reality get in the way of his doing whatever he wants to do."

"And there is no time. There is a war on. Always there is a war on."

"You are a hired sword. A soldier. You should not be playing philosophical games. Not even with yourself."

"What do you do when old prophecies come true? I’ve never met a priest who honestly expected miracles in his own lifetime. For them miracles are like good wine, best when aged."

"I must be alive. Otherwise I wouldn’t hurt so much."

"The sky? Dark as the inside of a priest’s heart, isn’t it?"

"Smeds did not like it. It was getting complicated. He did not like things complicated. Trying to untangle them usually made things worse."

"Rage is a red, near-animate force, as bloated with compassion as a starving serpent."

"“I don’t get the Kina story. If she died back at the beginning of the world, how could she be giving us trouble for the last twenty or thirty years?” “It’s religion, dimwit,” Goblin barked. “It don’t got to make sense.”"

"Smeds did not give a rat’s ass who ran things as long as they left him alone. Most people felt that way."

"Bomanz could not get away from the bird, who, if he had been human, would have hung out in taverns masquerading as the world’s foremost authority, armed with an uninformed and ready opinion on every conceivable subject. His cheerful bigotry and who-cares ignorance drove the old man’s temper to its limit."

"Ever since childhood I have suspected you get along better if you respect people’s ways and wishes regardless of your apparent relative strengths. That doesn’t mean you let people walk on you. It doesn’t mean you eat their pain for them. You need to demand respect for yourself, too."

"The road can blunt the most iron will."

"He knew that he had screwed up but he was the kind of guy who, after he shoots his mouth off, cannot back down or admit any failing. The world is full of those people. All of us would be better off if their fathers would strangle them as soon as they showed signs of being that way. This particular fool was willing to sacrifice an army rather than admit his error."

"Time has a way of blunting the sharpest edge of determination."

"He had learned self-control in a hard school. He had been married for thirty years."

"That damned rain had a personal grudge. It got no heavier but it never let up. Yet to east and west I saw light that indicated clear skies in those directions. The gods, if such existed, were laying on the misery especially for me."

"The Radisha kicked over a pile of books. “I’ve never felt so powerless. I don’t like the feeling.” Smoke shrugged. “Welcome to the world where the rest of us live.”"

"Never underestimate the power of human ingratitude."

"It is not necessarily for mercenary soldiers to know what is going on. It is sufficient for them to do the job for which they have taken the gold. That had been drummed into me from the moment I enlisted. There is neither right nor wrong, neither good nor evil, only our side and theirs. The honor of the company lies within, directed one brother toward another. Without, honor lies only in keeping faith with the sponsor."

"Willow, if the gods thought half as much of you as you think of yourself, you’d be king of the world."

"“Given time we would have become less than indispensable and you would have started looking around for a way to shaft us instead of doing the honorable thing and paying us off and simply terminating our commission.” “That’s what I love about you, Croaker. Your unflagging faith in humanity.” “Absolutely. Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent,” I grumped."

"I was learning that part of a captain’s job is to delegate. Maybe genius lies in choosing the right person for the right task."

"“Truth is a deadly weapon,” Lady said. “Which is why priests and princes dread it,” I said."

"Trouble came only where I expected it, from One-Eye, whose motto is that anything not nailed down is his and anything he can pry loose isn’t nailed down."

"The staff came to enquire after my needs. They were revolting in their obsequiousness. A disgusting little part of me gobbled it up. A part just big enough to show why some men lust after power. But not for me, thank you. I am too lazy. And I am, I fear, the unfortunate victim of a sense of responsibility. Put me in charge and I try to accomplish the ends to which the office was allegedly created. I guess I suffer from an impoverishment of the sociopathic spirit necessary to go big time."

"He couldn’t handle what it meant to have somebody in love with you. Running away was the only thing he knew how to do."

"Cruel, cruel tricks of the Adversary. I had been gifted with a mind that wanted to explore, to find out, to know. And I had been gifted with faith. And now I had been gifted with information that put fact and faith into conflict. I had not been gifted with a priest’s slippery dexterity when it came to reconciling the philosophically irreconcilable."

"He had gained all the power he had dreamed of then—and had not known a moment of peace since."

"That was not supposed to happen. It was unthinkable, supposedly. And for ordinary people that was mostly true. But not so at a level where men began to believe that they existed outside the usual rules."

"Nobody had any ideas. The questions just sort of lay there like dead fish too ripe to be ignored and too big to shove out of the way."

"The soldiers stumbled forward doggedly, cursing the bite of the wind while reminding one another that generals are seldom of sound mind and unbesmirched ancestry. They would not be generals if they were."

"She wanted to be crazy. She said when you’re crazy the truth is whatever you want it to be. She wanted what she remembered not to be true."

"I had forgotten the first rule: everybody lies about sex, and the client always lies about it."

"The human capacity for mischief is boundless."

"The pill-brain microdeity whose mission is to mess with my life was on the job."

"“I’ve always suffered from a weakness for female flesh.” “Don’t we all.” He scowled. “That wasn’t a problem when I was younger. If I visited a prostitute and she found me out, she’d laugh. Priests are their best customers. But if I were found out now I could be destroyed.”"

"I took nothing at face. Everywhere I turned religion popped up, and that’s a game of masks and deceit and illusions if ever there was one."

"The runt seemed awfully reasonable for a supposed raving fanatic. I guess the first talent a priest develops is acting ability."

"I decided she wouldn’t show. What was in it for her? I was pretty sure she was a gal who didn’t take a deep breath without calculating her return on investment. Such a shame; all that beauty wasted."

"She had a full measure of youth’s indifference to the past."

"But, no. It was too late. Fortune’s die was cast. The cruel game had to be played to its end, no matter what anyone wanted."

"It was the wee hours of the morning, when even the heartbeat of the world had trouble thumping on."

"Life is never like a canal, flowing gently through a straightforward and predictable channel. It is more like a mountain brook, zigging and zagging, tearing things up, sometimes going almost dormant before taking an unexpected and turbulent turn."

"To me wine is just so much spoiled fruit juice."