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Once you’ve got a task to do, it’s better to do it than to live with the fear of it.
the ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company. Having lost the high ground already they scramble eagerly for the position of likeable idiot, stay out of arguments they will only lose, and can hence be everyone’s friend.
‘I’ve fought in three campaigns,’ he began. ‘In seven pitched battles. In countless raids and skirmishes and desperate defences, and bloody actions of every kind. I’ve fought in the driving snow, the blasting wind, the middle of the night. I’ve been fighting all my life, one enemy or another, one friend or another. I’ve known little else. I’ve seen men killed for a word, for a look, for nothing at all. A woman tried to stab me once for killing her husband, and I threw her down a well. And that’s far from the worst of it. Life used to be cheap as dirt to me. Cheaper. ‘I’ve fought ten single
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You can never have too many knives,
tapping two languid fingers against her palm in a quarter-hearted imitation of clapping.
‘We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.’ Heinrich Heine
rankled.
Time might be against them, but there was nothing to be gained by rushing. You have to be realistic about these things.
‘That’s what war is, in my experience. A great deal of waiting, in unpleasant conditions. A great deal of waiting, with occasional moments of the most extreme terror.’
Fear teaches you caution, and respect for your enemy, and to avoid sharp edges used in anger.
‘Then you’ve got the chance to do better next time.’ ‘Next time?’ ‘Course. Doing better next time. That’s what life is.’
Self-pity was for children and halfwits.
He couldn’t deny it was somewhat of a daunting prospect, but it was better to do it, than to live in fear of it. A lot better.
‘We are leaders. War is what happens when we fail. Or are pushed into failure by the rash and the foolish. Victory is better than defeat, but . . . not by much.
sloth
Sometimes it doesn’t matter too much what choice you make, as long as you make it quick and stick to it.
work. I suppose that you can trust me to act in my own interests. Just as far as I can trust you to do the same.
If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person? You have to be realistic.
Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s reluctant.
Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say that bastard never learns.
Which left one choice, and that’s no choice at all.
First it is done to us, then we do it to others, then we order it done. Such is the way of things.
