Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

I’m a good runner any day of the week. Scared shitless I’m world class.

The chamberlain had a voice that could make a death sentence boring.

If there’s one good thing to be said about opera, it’s that it makes a man appreciate all other forms of entertainment so much more.

I have quick feet, but it’s probably my total disregard for other people’s safety that allowed me to open a considerable lead so swiftly.

When you run out of screaming during a fall, you know that you’ve dropped way too far.

“To err is human, to forgive is divine . . . but I’m only a cardinal and cardinals are human, so rather than forgiving you I’m going to err towards beating you with this stick.”

Enjoy the world while you can, I say. A shallow enough philosophy by which to live, but shallow is what I’ve got. Besides, deep is apt to drown you.

Battles are all about strategy, and strategy pivots on priorities. Since my priorities were Prince Jalan, Prince Jalan, and Prince Jalan, with “looking good” a distant fourth, I took the opportunity to resume running away.

With Snorri troubles were always put front and centre and dealt with. My style was more to shove them under the rug until the floor got too uneven to navigate, and then to move house.

nothing would compel me to stand against twenty mercenaries. It sounded better like that. More reasonable. Twenty mercenaries. The truth was that nothing would compel me to stand against one mercenary, but twenty sounded like a better excuse to leave a friend in the lurch. A friend? I pondered that one on the way down. An acquaintance sounded better.

I’ve always considered a head to be a solid object, but as Snorri’s axe passed through the mercenary’s I had to reconsider.

My father used to admonish me to excel in all things. Excellence in cowardice means being quick off the mark. If you want to run away fast, then the first thing to do is take off in whatever direction you happen to be facing.

Life has ways of getting under your skin, spoiling your fun with too much information. Youth is truly the happiest time where we roll in the bliss of ignorance.

If God had meant man to walk he wouldn’t have given us horses. Wonderful animals. I think of them as the word escape, covered in hair and with a leg at each corner.