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Start the evening looking for fun, end the morning begging forgiveness.
She’d been called a scammer, a fleecer, a cheat, a thief, a bitch, a thieving bitch, a ferrety fuck, a lying weasel, and those were only the ones she’d taken as compliments.
“A time comes when the stakes are of such enormity that moral objections become themselves immoral.”
You have to treat people like oranges, Gal the Purse always said. Squeeze what you can from the bastards, then waste no regrets when you toss away their wrung-out skins. You have to treat people like stepping stones. Like rungs on your ladder. Or you’ll wake up one day with nothing but a set of bootprints on your own back.
He had never had much patience for religion. What was it, really, but superstition with money?
“Even bad shows need a villain.”
In a leader, no one wants to see doubts.
“Know the ground where you make your stand.
You can stack your doubts high before. You can polish your regrets up after. But while the fight’s on, your purpose must be pure. Kill the enemy. Don’t die yourself.
The oaths would keep him standing when his flesh failed. When his courage failed. When his faith failed.
A fallen enemy is a dead enemy, and a dead enemy was Jakob’s favourite kind.
No one wants to see doubts. You make your choice and live with it. Or die with it.
“If your God made all things, didn’t he also make…” And she turned to give everyone a full view of her front, as densely muscled and painted as the back. “All this?”
Wasn’t much more she could do. Nothing needed stealing, and no one needed lying to, and it was hard to see how losing at cards would help, so that was her whole skillset exhausted.
“The Church is not that keen on God, in my experience,” said Baron Rikard. “They think of him much as a lawyer thinks of the law. Something to be got around.” “You’re a vampire,” snapped Brother Diaz. “Of course you hate the Church.” “On the contrary, I am a great admirer of the tenets of your religion. I merely find it a shame that the Saved are, as a rule, so little like their Saviour.”
“Looks like the pilgrims are getting all their sinning done before they set off,” murmured Baptiste.
“My question,” murmured Vigga, “is can I get a taste?” “Of the absolution or the sin?” She showed him her fangs. “How d’you get one without the other?”
Jakob had yet to see a theologist solve a problem they hadn’t themselves created.
“To be human is to sin,”
“A wound to the body pales beside a wound to the soul.”
If he’d learned one thing during his many years on earth, it was that words are rarely better than silence.
The Saviour had said one could not buy one’s way into heaven, but most agreed that was just a negotiating tactic on her part.
“Virtue is found in the resistance of temptation,” said the bishop, “rather than its absence.
Alex couldn’t help thinking that pretend heroes might feel good, but honest cowards likely last longer.
He believed in God, of course, but, as a magician, they had never particularly got on. He believed in goats but desired no interaction with them.
Lying was a sin, apparently, unless you did it outrageously and persistently enough, in which case it qualified as scripture.
The past was nutshells. Once they’re cracked off what use are they?
“How can one choose a life of virtue,” asked Baptiste, piously clasping her hands, “without understanding the alternative?”
“It’s not the wisdom to build that was lost.” Jakob caught a mossy post beside the boat. “It’s the will.”
She could make herself invisible. That was her thing. But could she make herself visible? There was the problem.
“Because no one’s really happy where they are, Sunny.”
“It’s when there’s no sign of trouble you most need to watch for it.”
“I’ve learned not to worry about what I can’t change.”
“The less I can change it, the more it worries me.”
“I never can make friends.” And there was silence as they trudged on through the gathering darkness. Sunny felt Alex glance across at her, then away. “You’ve made one,” she said.
“The best liars don’t lie about everything. Who would believe them then?”
“Not looking like a spy is exactly what a spy would look like,”
“A problem for men that are much loved … or much feared … is that no one will tell them hard truths.”
To bring a demon who wants to come, you only have to ask. It is when they arrive that your problems begin.
If you’re a monster…” And he looked up at her. “At least you’re an honest one.”
“The world’s a bitter place,” said Alex, a gleam in the corner of one eye made Sunny think she was smiling. Made Sunny hope she was smiling. “We’ve got to grasp at any joy we can.”
“We all see the world through the lens of our own obsessions,” murmured Jakob.
“Happy endings are just stories that aren’t finished yet.”
“People, and great figures especially, are rarely all hero or villain.”
And a truly wise man must accept that, however much he knows, there is always far more to learn.”
“I mean, I’ve got mixed feelings on God, and he fucking hates me, but oh God.”
“Thought you didn’t believe in God anymore.” “Maybe I was hoping … that he still believed in me.”
“You get to my age, you realise nothing lasts for ever. No love, no hate, no war, no peace. If a thing hasn’t ended … you haven’t waited long enough.”
“Where’s the fun in safe?”
“The problem with clever people is they think everything must be clever.
