"And there went some good old-fashioned wishful thinking, Sleepy. We were talking about human beings. If there is any way to be contrary, unreasonable and obnoxious, human beings are sure to find and pursue it. With verve and enthusiasm at whatever might be the most inconvenient time."

"Leadership tip: Sound confident even when you have no idea. Just do not make a habit of it. They will find you out."

"Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true."

"The power to kill becomes the ultimate power in the hands of a man who has no reservations about employing it."

"Asking a storyteller not to embellish is like asking a fish to give up water."

"Not dangerous at all. Not even that lucky. But a sufficiently paranoid mind will discern patterns and threats where only fortune has conspired."

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

"You might have noticed that the human animal is fond of forming and clinging to prejudices, remaining their steadfast curator in the face of all reason and contradiction."

"I picked up my five cards from the next deal. “This ain’t a hand, it’s a foot.”"

"The people come from everywhere, from five hundred miles, to find their fortunes. But Fortune is an ugly, two-faced goddess. When you have lived with her handiwork for half a generation, you hardly notice anymore. You forget that this is not the way life has to be. You cease to marvel at just how much evil man can conjure simply by existing."

"Desperate people will do what they must to survive. Only a fool would expect the results to be pretty."

"Like most villains, he was wicked only most of the time and mainly in small-minded ways."

"“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.”"

"Peace had broken out and was being enthusiastically exploited on the presumption that it could not possibly last."

"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."

"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."

"“It would take an entire nation a thousand years to build something this vast. No monument so huge can be a good thing.” “I don’t understand.” “Only a very great evil could remain so single of purpose, so uncaring of cost, as to create something so ultimately useless.”"

"We are not really a godless bunch. We are just the sort who ignore the gods—probably in the unconscious hope that the gods will not notice us."

"Though not as bad as most, he was going through that stage where he knew everything worth knowing and nothing his elders said—particularly if it bore any vaguely education hue—was worth hearing. He could not help that. It went with the age. And I was my age and could not help saying things I knew would do no good."

"We are all the sum total of our pasts, good and evil."

"The best of the diviner breed are never wrong because they never set anything in stone."

"Death will find a way. Even the gods must pass."

"They (i. e., the peasants) could imagine no future more grim than their past."

"Sadly, after years of study, I realize that most history may pivot on personal considerations like that, not on the pursuit of ideals dark or shining."

"But with royalty you never know. They think differently than real people. The real world never quite seems to reach them."

"Somebody a lot smarter than me once said, “Put no trust in wizards.”"

"“We’re still the Black Company. We still don’t leave our own behind.” Which was never strictly true but you do have to serve an ideal the best you can, lest it become debased. A law as ancient as coinage itself says bad money will drive out good. The same is true of principles, ethics and rules of conduct. If you always do the easier thing, then you cannot possible remain steadfast when it becomes necessary to take a difficult stand. You must do what you know to be right. And you do know. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you do know and you are just making excuses because the right thing is so hard, or just inconvenient."

"“I still got all my limbs and I’m still breathing.” “Makes you a winner in the soldiering game.”"

"It is a saying of my people. Even Water sleeps. But Enemy never rests."

"Time is the most wicked of all villains."

"Soldiers live. And wonder why."

"“When you get back to Taglios now, Master, you can establish a mighty reputation by explaining the myths in the words of a being who lived through their creation.” Santaraksita smiled sourly, “You know better, Dorabee. Mythology is one area where nobody wants to know the absolute truth because time has forged great symbols from raw materials supplied by ancient events. Prosaic distortions of fact metamorphose into perceived truths of the soul.” He had a point. In religion, precise truth has almost no currency. True believers will kill and destroy to defend their inaccurate beliefs. And that is a truth upon which you can rely."

"Though it might wear a thousand different names in a thousand different times, and might come from a thousand different directions, darkness always comes."

"Seemed to have made peace with the bad times. Some manage that with comparative ease. Others remain crippled for life. Those are not the sort who remain soldiers. They become ex-soldiers and get intimate with wine or poppies."

"I sped a prayer heavenward. God needs to be reminded."

"I must be driven. I figured that as long as I had to stay out there I ought to keep scouting around. Working in my sleep. Ought to have the Old Man double my pay. How much is two times a stab in the back?"

"You can be screamingly blind to the obvious if you don’t realize that you have not opened up all the doors of your mind."

"All is not lost. But neither is it found."

"Beneath my breath I continued my conversation with God. As usual, He did not trouble Himself to defend His Works to me. My fault for being a woman."

"I’m an incurable romantic. The essence of romance is an unshakable conviction that next time will be different."

"I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled toward absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks."

"Are lovers ever honest?"

"I began to back away. This is how I handle my women. Duck for cover when they get distressed."

"Dawn comes early when you wish it would not. The hours flash when you want them to drag."

"The light overcame the shadow. But as always, the shadow left its taint on the victors."

"Slight gasp. “You grow too bold.” Didn’t I? “I’m sorry. Thinking out loud. An unhealthy habit known to be the cause of bruises and major hemorrhaging.”"

"Why do sorcerers always use languages nobody understands? Even Goblin and One-Eye do it. Each has confided that he cannot follow the tongue the other uses. Maybe they make it up?"

"No religion I ever encountered made any sense. None are consistent. Most gods are megalomaniacs and paranoid psychotics by their worshipers’ description. I don’t see how they could survive their own insanity. But it’s not impossible that human beings are incapable of interpreting a power so much greater than themselves. Maybe religions are twisted and perverted shadows of truth. Maybe there are forces which shape the world. I myself have never understood why, in a universe so vast, a god would care about something so trivial as worship or human destiny."