"“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."

"If I had my druthers I’d be twenty-three years old for the rest of my life. Which would last another three thousand years."

"“Used to be” is not worth the breeze on which it is scribbled."

"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."

"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."

"Hatreds seldom are constrained to rational scales."

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

"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."

"Good morning. I’m honored but I’m also pressed for time. If you have something to discuss please get to the point. I’m an hour behind schedule and didn’t budget time for socializing."

"The resources would have to come from that absurd wall project. The city was too big to surround effectively. The project could not be justified. It was a tool for transferring the wealth of the state to a few individuals."

"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."

"No world lacks its villains so self-confident that they don’t believe they can get the best end of a bargain with the darkness."

"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."

"He winced. “You’ll start a civil war.” “Not if everybody behaves and minds his own business.” “You don’t understand. Priests consider everything their business.”"

"Never underestimate the power of human ingratitude."

"“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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"His problem is, he gets an idea in his head and he can’t get it out if it’s wrong, no matter what evidence you hit him with."

"Life with me and the Company has not been anything like happily ever after. Reality has a way of slow-roasting romance."

"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.”"

"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."

"The thing that you know to be true is the lie that will kill you."

"“They worship the goddess, Mistress. They think. But their heresies are revolting. They are worse than disbelief.” Why was he incensed? A prolonged exchange failed to illuminate me. No godless person can comprehend those minute distinctions in doctrine that provide true believers excuse for mayhem. It is hard enough to accept the fact that they really believe the nonsense of their faiths. I always wonder if they are pulling my leg with a straight face."

"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."

"An adventure is somebody else slogging through the mud and snow while suffering from trench foot, ringworm, dysentery and starvation, being chased by people with their hearts set on murder or more. I have been there. I have done that, playing both parts. I do not recommend it. Be content with a nice farm or shop. Make lots of babies and bring them up to be good people."

"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."

"Will, Lady. The Will will reign triumphant. My husband had said that often, confident that nothing could resist his will. He had believed that right up to the moment I killed him."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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 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.”"

"Time is the most wicked of all villains."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."