More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Once you’ve got a task to do, it’s better to do it than to live with the fear of it.
‘The blade itself incites to deeds of violence’ Homer
So you were sent to the North, and put in charge of one of our mines there. What did you make of Angland?’ A filthy sink of violence and corruption. A prison where we have made slaves of the innocent and guilty alike in the name of freedom. A stinking hole where we send those we hate and those we are ashamed of to die of hunger, and disease, and hard labour. ‘It was cold,’ said Glokta. ‘And so were you. You made few friends in Angland. Precious few among the Inquisition, and none among the exiles.’
You carry on. That’s what he’d always done. That’s the task that comes with surviving, whether you deserve to live or not. You remember the dead as best you can. You say some words for them. Then you carry on, and you hope for better.
Jezal had often observed that the ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company.
You have to love the small things, when you’ve nothing else.
It was like staring at a whitewashed wall, but without all the emotion.
Poison? A slow death twitching and puking on the Arch Lector’s lovely mosaic floor? Or just pitching onto my face on his table? But there was really no option but to grasp the glass and take a hearty swig.
no choice
Hard words are for fools and cowards.
If you mean to kill, you’re better getting right to it than talking about it. Talk only makes the other man ready, and that’s the last thing you want.
That’s the trouble with good legs, you tend to run around too much. If you have trouble moving, on the other hand, you don’t move until you damn well know it’s time.
The Bloody-Nine they call me, my enemies, and there’s a lot of ’em. Always more enemies, and fewer friends. Blood gets you nothing but more blood. It follows me now, always, like my shadow, and like my shadow I can never be free of it. I should never be free of it. I’ve earned it.
But some things have to be done. It’s better to do them, than to live with the fear of them.
Better to have it, and not want it, than to want it, and not have it.
Every man has his excuses, and the more vile the man becomes, the more touching the story has to be.
the ground must be a general’s best friend, or it becomes his worst enemy?’
The more you learn, the more you realise how little you know. Still, the struggle itself is worthwhile.
‘All my life I’ve sought to know things. What’s on the other side of the mountains? What are my enemies thinking? What weapons will they use against me? What friends can I trust?’ Logen shrugged. ‘Knowledge may be the root of power, but each new thing I’ve learned has left me worse off.’ He sucked again on the pipe, but it was finished. He tapped the ashes out onto the ground. ‘Whatever it is you want from me I will try to do, but I don’t want to know until it’s time. I’m sick of making my own decisions. They’re never the right ones. Ignorance is the sweetest medicine, my father used to say. I
...more
‘Life – the way it really is – is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse’ Joseph Brodsky
Why do big men tend to have such little brains? Perhaps they get by on brawn too often, and their minds dry up like plums in the sun.
They were a strange-seeming crowd, especially the women. Pale and ghostly, swaddled in elaborate dresses, hair scraped up and piled and stuck through with pins and combs and great weird feathers or useless tiny hats. They seemed like the big jar in the round chamber – too thin and delicate to be any use, and further spoiled by too much decoration. But it had been a long time, and he smiled at them cheerfully, on the off chance. Some looked shocked, others gasped in horror. Logen sighed. The old magic was still there.
It was a fact, he was only now beginning to realise, that the conversation of the drunk is only interesting to the drunk.
A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time, and had never got anywhere.
‘No one cares about the past any more,’ he whispered. ‘They don’t see that you can’t have a future without a past.’
‘My father used to say the seeds of the past bear fruit in the present.’
aye
‘Whatever became of him, eh, West? You know, that friend of yours, that dashing young man, handsome, proud, fearless? Magic touch with the women? Loved and respected by all, destined for great things? Wherever did he go?’ West looked back, puzzled and unsure of himself, and said nothing. Glokta lurched towards him, hands spread out on the table, lips curling back to show his ruined mouth. ‘Dead! He died on the bridge! And what remains? A fucking ruin with his name! A limping, skulking shadow! A crippled ghost, clinging to life the way the smell of piss clings to a beggar. He has no friends,
...more
there was blood on him, but that was good. There was always blood. But he was kneeling, and that was wrong. The Bloody-Nine kneels to no man. His fingers sought out the cracks between the stones of the fireplace, prising between them like old tree roots, pulling him up. His leg hurt and he smiled. Pain was the fuel that made the fires burn. Something moved in front of him. Masked men. Enemies. Corpses, then.
Something dug into the Bloody-Nine’s back, but there was no pain. It was a sign. A message in a secret tongue, that only he could understand. It told him where the next dead man was standing.
