More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink,
“Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.”
Men like that in a leader, that he demands of himself the same thing he expects of them.
The welfare of the people belongs to the people, and they have the right to object if their duke stewards it poorly.
My silences he mistook for a lack of wit rather than a lack of any need to speak.
That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention.’
It was an impressive display of good food abused in the name of fashionable cooking.
I have never known a soldier who didn’t know where the kitchens were.
one may ask of the Elderlings, but the answer they give may not be to the question you ask, but to the one you should have asked.
a prince’s hand could not be wasted on something as foolish as his own choice.
‘The fight isn’t over until you win it,
Often he was left to cope with a situation not of his creating, armed only with options not of his choosing.
I like that in a man. Knowing what he can do, and doing it.
an outcast among politely nodding people.
He mourns for all the knowledge that goes into a grave each time a man dies, even the commonest of men.
‘The most distinctive part of your fighting style is the incredible way you have of surviving it.’
What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine.
Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world?
It’s not the kind of work a man does that says he can be proud or not. It’s how he does it.
‘Sometimes,’ Chade observed, ‘it would be much easier to die for one’s king than to give one’s life for him.’
a fierce resolve that we would not lose what we had now to what we could not have tomorrow.
Time is no miser when one lives always in the now.
We all served our king as our abilities dictated.’
You are not a prince, you are an assassin. You are not the player, you are the game-piece. And when you make your own moves, you set every other strategy awry and endanger every piece on the board!’
The stalking is the beginning of the eating.
So what should I do, oh wise master? Stop whining about it and just do it. So I can sleep.
I wondered if there were any way to live amongst other people and refuse to be harnessed by their expectations and dependencies.
Now go to sleep. Sleeping is serious,
she offered me no more solace than any man might find in his own hand.
There was a woman smell to her that was not a perfume but a part of her.
Regal had never been able to grasp the difference between fear and respect.
Men,’ Starling muttered softly to herself. ‘They go off to fight or to travel and they expect their lives to be waiting for them when they get back.
I think I made a better boy than I do a man, I admitted ruefully to the wolf. Why not wait until you’ve been at it a bit longer and then decide? he suggested.
The small folk of a land can only be oppressed so long before they rise up in their own defence, be it against outlanders or an unjust lord of their own.
It is like the game of stones, FitzChivalry. One plays each stone to best advantage in the game. The object is to win, not to hoard one’s stones.’
There is nothing like being treated like a child to provoke one to act that way.
A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.
