The Crown Tower (The Riyria Chronicles, #1)

by Michael J. Sullivan

Fear made all the difference between rational and insane and could even masquerade one for the other.

You’re blind and a fool!” Samuel said. Hadrian laid a hand casually on the pommel of his short sword and Samuel stiffened. “I’ll add deaf to that list, but only this once,”

“We only know colors by relationships. Your father likely pointed to hundreds of objects whose only common feature was the color, and eventually you understood that the commonality of color equaled the word he used. A lot of things are that way, abstract ideas that have no object to define them. Right and wrong, for example. Problems tend to occur when people are eager to fill their cups and accept ideas by those who might be, metaphorically, color blind. Once an idea is learned, once it settles in, it becomes comfortable and hard to discard, like an old hat.

if you can’t bear to lose an old hat that you never wear, imagine how much harder it is to abandon ideas you grew up with.

Pick anyone and the odds are pretty good that they’re not nice. Everyone looks nice.

Marbury twisted around, nearly spilling his drink with his elbow. “Did I invite you to this discussion?” “No, but they didn’t invite you to theirs either.” “Harding, go bless yourself.” “Bless you too.”

“You alive?” Hadrian asked. “If I were dead, I don’t think there’d be geese.” Royce tilted his head up to catch the arrow of birds heading south. “But maybe they’re evil geese.” “Evil geese?” “We have no idea what goes on in the water fowl world. They might have been a gang that stole eggs or something.”

“There’s doing what’s right, and there’s doing what’s safe. Most of the time you do what’s safe because doing different will get you dead for no good reason, but there are times when doing what’s safe will kill you too. Only it’ll be a different kind of death. The dying will be slow, the sort that eats from the inside until breathing becomes a curse. Understand?”