"I felt wonderfully wicked. I always do when I frustrate overly powerful, responsible-to-no-one types who think all existence was created only for their pleasure and exploitation."

"She—and I—were of an age now where we spent too much time wondering how things might have gone had we made a few different choices."

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

"I did not expect them to try anything but I am alive at my age because I make a habit of being ready for trouble when it seems most unlikely."

"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."

"I reminded myself that Khang Phi is bereft of arms. That the monks abhor violence. That they always yield to strength, then seduce it with reason and wisdom. Yes, sometimes it does take a while."

"Baladitya understands that in addition to being foreign territory the past is, as history, a hall of mirrors that reflect the needs of souls observing from the present. Absolute fact serves the hungers of only a few disconnected people. Symbol and faith serve the rest."

"It proved to be much farther than I had hoped. It always is when you are running away."

"There was one temporal power greater than the greatest sorcery. Greed."

"I tend toward the cynical view where religion is concerned."

"This is what happens when you get old. You start thinking. Worse, you start telling everybody what you think."

"I had a thought. That happens. So do lunar eclipses."

"There are, of course, a thousand sophistries spewed by those who wish to deny individuals the opportunity to choose. Which is an arrogant presumption of a divine scale."

"Blade grumbled about the absurdities of the theological imagination and why didn’t people have sense enough to smother would-be priests in their cradles?"

"I heard Mather’s blather but it did not register as sense. I uttered, “Tooga ain’t no crazier than any other religion around here.” That seemed to offend everyone equally. Good."

"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."

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

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

"There were too many secret things going on. And too many perfectly banal, openmouthed evils driven by ambition or fanaticism distracting everyone from the creeping apocalypse."

"“Do you think we could get a tutor for Varth?” “A tutor? Royal! We’re peasants.” “Castes are castes, but there’re ways to get around that. Silver is the best.""

"Hatreds seldom are constrained to rational scales."

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

"Mr. Garrett, you appear to be the sort who needs to be cut to believe in swords. I understand that mentality better than you think. Do you comprehend the idea of symbol? You say you accept sorcery. The very root of sorcery is manipulation of symbol in a way that affects referent. And that’s the root of religion, too."

"Hano may not fulfill your prescription for such a being. So call him Prime Mover or just the force that set time and matter in motion. He must be because we need him to be. And he must be what we need him to be. It is a philosophical argument difficult to grasp for we who live among obdurately hard surfaces and sharp edges that ignore our wishes, but the observer invariably affects the phenomenon. In this context, God—by whatever name—is, and is constrained to be, whatever we believe him to be."

"You need understand only that they are more dangerous than anyone you have ever battled, excepting perhaps vampires defending their nest. They do not just believe, they know. Their devil god has spoken to each of them directly and has given each of them a look into a paradise where they will spend eternity. They will do anything because they know there is no penalty to compare with their coming reward. They fear nothing. They are saved and will be born again, and concrete evidence has been given them for this. They need take the word of no one but their god himself."

"We Loghyr have never found proof of the existence of any gods. Neither have we disproved their existence, although logic militates against it. They are not necessary to explain anything. Nature does not provide that which is not needed."

"When the going gets tough, the smart get going and the stupid keep heading toward trouble."

"I’m a guy who doesn’t understand intangible stakes. I know some would argue that I have a set of values I take pretty seriously, but if I can’t eat it or spend it or make it go purr in the night, I don’t know what to do with it. It’s a weakness, a blind spot. Sometimes I forget that there are guys willing to get killed over ideas."

"“Know what I think? I got started on the wrong foot at the beginning. I’ve been trying to get it to make sense.” Maya looked at me weird. “What the hell are you yapping about?” “I’m trying to make sense of something that isn’t rational. I knew from the beginning that religion was involved. Several religions, maybe. You can try from now until the end of the world and you’re not going to make sense out of that.”"

"People don’t want to be told to do right. They don’t really want to do right. They want to do whatever they want—and whine that it’s not fair, it’s not their fault, when it comes time to pay the piper."

"However, proof or lack thereof are unnecessary to the mind that must believe. And that mind becomes doubly narrow and doubly dangerous when it is given what it perceives as proof. Then it can begin to create that in which it believes."

"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.”"

"The human capacity for mischief is boundless."

"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."

"Next thing I knew I wasn’t alone. And the someone with me was very warm, very naked, and very female. And very determined. And I sure don’t have much will power."

"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."

"Even when you have your mind made up, you can’t stay blind to reality forever."

"Every revelation slashes Belief with a brutal razor. Already some who never questioned have begun to wonder if all religion isn’t just a shell game perpetrated by societies of con men who milk the gullible."

"My favorite sport is female and my favorite food is beer."

"She wouldn’t have to work to charm the wardrobe off me. She had that something that goes beyond beauty, beyond style—an aura, a presence. She was the kind of woman who leaves eunuchs weeping and priests cursing their vows."

"His big crime was stupidity compounded by godlessness."

"I’m tempted to invoke penalties on the lot and let the gods distinguish between the wicked and the merely incompetent."

"The only thing that comes easy is trouble."

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

"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."

"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."