The Crystal Shard (Forgotten Realms: The Icewind Dale, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #4)

by R.A. Salvatore

When you live with death so close, you come to appreciate life all the more.

I care because I have to care about something. You are not so different, Bruenor Battlehammer. We care lest our own lives be empty.”

Tradition. It is the root of who we are, the link to our heritage, the reminder that we as a people, if not individually, will span the ages.

Tradition. What gravity indeed does that word impart! What power it wields! As it roots us and grounds us and gives us hope for who we are because of who we were, so it also wreaks destruction and denies change.

The world is not static, and if the roots of our perceptions, traditions, hold static, then we are doomed, I say, into destructive dogma.

“A king is a man strong of character and conviction who leads by example and truly cares for the sufferings of his people,”

He knew then and there that Drizzt would someday lead him into a situation from which there was no escape.

“Prayne de crabug ahm keike rinedere be-yogt iglo kes gron!”

“Where in the nine hells did you ever find the notion that I would fight fair?”

A thousand humiliating slaps from the drow’s scimitars had taught Wulfgar that the first blow was not nearly as important as the last.

The meekest of animals will fight bravely when it is backed against a wall, for it has nothing left to lose. A poor man is more deadly than a rich man because he puts less value on his own life. And a man stranded homeless on the frozen steppes with the first winds of winter already beginning to blow is a formidable enemy indeed!