More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
July 19, 2019 - January 2, 2020
There’s plenty of dignity in just holding on.
There are many forms of courage, I believe, most of which pass unseen by the majority of us. It’s not always about facing death, is it? Sometimes it’s about facing life.’
‘You’re not broken. The walking dead don’t break.
These Malazans, they shame the gods themselves.
Hiding ain’t living. Hiding’s just walking dead.
Maybe that fits. Maybe it’s only right that we should be the ones to raise your standard, Fallen One. And ignorant historians will write of us, in the guise of knowledge. They will argue over our purpose – the things we sought to do. They will overturn every boulder, every barrow stone, seeking our motives. Looking for hints of ambition. They will compose a Book of the Fallen.
The Adjunct never stands in the centre. She stands to one side. Always. The truth of that is right there, in her title – which she will not relinquish. So, what does it mean? Ah, Fallen One, it means this: she will do what she has to do, but your life is not in her hands. I see that now. Fallen One, your life is in the hands of a murderer of Malazan marines and heavies. Your life is in my hands. And soon she will send us on our way. In that Malazan Book of the Fallen, the historians will write of our suffering, and they will speak of it as the suffering of those who served the Crippled God. As
...more
‘If it is true and the Grey Helms seek to be the swords of nature’s vengeance, then the Shield Anvil has missed the point. Since when is nature interested in revenge? Look around.’ He waved a hand. ‘The grass grows back where it can. The birds nest where they can. The soil breathes when it can. It just goes on, Highness, the only way it knows how to – with what’s left.’
How perfect is running? This grand delusion of flight? Away from our demons, ever away, until even the self sobs loose, spins lost in our wake. Perfect, oh yes. And a thing to despise. No distance can win an escape; no speed can outrun this self and all its host of troubles. It’s only the sweet exhaustion that follows that we so cherish. An exhaustion so pure it is as close to dying as we can get without actually doing so.
Poets could speak knowingly of metaphors; if life is walking, then running is a life’s entire span speeded up, and to act out birth to death in a single day, over and over again, has the flavour of perfect habit, for it mimicks undeniable truths. Small deaths paying homage to the real one. We choose them in myriad forms and delight in the ritual. I could run until I wear out. Every joint, every bone and every muscle. I could run until my heart groans older than its years, and finally bursts. I could damn the poets and make the metaphor real. We are all self-destructive. It is integral to our
...more
We go as far as we can go, and then we stop. And that is how it is.
The first truly Malazan card for the Deck of Dragons. Artist, you did me proud. A single misshapen, vaguely polished object in the centre of a dark field. ‘Behold,’ Paran said under his breath, ‘the Shaved Knuckle in the Hole.’
I remember so many loves, so many things lost. I remember being broken. Again and again. There need be no end to it – there is no law to say that one cannot break one more time.
A god dies. And the fighting simply goes on, and we add to the rain with blood of our own. I am seeing the history of the world – here, before me. I am seeing it all, age upon age. All so…useless.
If we could, we would follow these two humans into the firestorm itself. If we could, we would follow them to the edge of the very Abyss. You ask what manner of men are these – Destriant, I was about to ask this very same question of you.’ She shook her head, shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know. Malazans.’
only the fallen can rise again.
‘The dead forget us.’ So said Gallan. ‘The dead forget us, and this is why we fear death.’
We were never what people could be. We were only what we were. Remember us.
