The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War, #2)

by Mark Lawrence

Fear is a valuable commodity, it’s common sense compressed into its purest form.

What saves us all are the deeds of fools as often as the acts of the wise.

A consequence of boredom is that a man is forced to look either to the future or the past, or sideways into his imagination.

There’s a simple joy in casting a rock into still waters and watching the ripples spread. It’s the thrill of destruction combined with the surety that all will be well again—everything as it was.

Great emotion, it turns out, is a fire, and like a fire it needs fuel. Unfed it dies down to a hot and banked glow, ready to ignite again but leaving space for other matters.

There’s a lesson in that somewhere. The road forgets. Make your life a journey, keep moving toward what you want, leave behind anything that’s too heavy to carry.

Still, children hope in ways adults find hard to imagine. They carry their dreams before them, fragile, in both arms, waiting for the world to trip them.