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

by Mark Lawrence

The wise come into their majority out in the world, amid the muck and pain of living.

The betrayal a child feels when a parent abandons them returned to me now—still sharp.

Dig deep enough into anyone and you’ll find a scared little boy or scared little girl trying to get out.

I have been accused in the past of being a little self-centred and my only interest in the family’s glorious history was to know where they’d buried the loot.

Men are many and take strength as a challenge, difference as a crime.

If there’s one thing I know about people, from fool to sage, it’s that they have a hard time not showing that they know more than you do—and of course by doing so they close that gap a little.

In the midst of such institutionalized theft on so grand a scale individual thievery could not be tolerated in any degree. Only by strict adherence to the rules of the theft could the illusion of it being lawful and civilized be maintained.

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.

We’re like that. Give us everything we ask for and suddenly it’s too much.