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‘One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.’ The fingers of her good hand plucked and scrabbled uselessly at his fist. ‘Love is a fine cushion to rest upon, but only hate can make you a better person.
No plague spreads quicker than panic, Stolicus wrote, nor is more deadly. The veneer of civilisation was peeled suddenly away.
‘The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness’ Joseph Conrad
Our cause is just . . . or just enough,
away into half-arsed anecdotes, thin and unconvincing as some other bastard’s lies. The failures, the disappointments, the regrets, they stay raw as the moments they happened. A pretty girl’s smile, never acted on. A petty wrong we let another take the blame for. A nameless shoulder that knocked us in a crowd and left us stewing for days, for months. For ever.’ He curled his lip. ‘This is the stuff the past is made of. The wretched moments that make us what we are.’
you should laugh every moment you live, for you’ll find it decidedly difficult afterwards.’
To the starving man, bread is beautiful. To the homeless man, a roof is beautiful. To the drunkard, wine is beautiful. Only those who want for nothing else need find beauty in a lump of rock.
But there was no justice, and Monza knew it. The clouds pissed where they pleased.
Strong leaders might like it when someone brings ’em a better idea, but weak ones never do.
You make yourself too hard, you make yourself brittle too. Crack once, crack all to pieces.
“Things aren’t what they used to be” is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.’
‘Men can have all manner of deeply held beliefs about the world in general that they find most inconvenient when called upon to apply to their own lives. Few people let morality get in the way of expediency. Or even convenience. A man who truly believes in a thing beyond the point where it costs him is a rare and dangerous thing.’
‘Unhappy times are the best for levity. You don’t light candles in the middle of the day, do you?’
