The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War, #3)

by Mark Lawrence

Courtesy costs nothing, which makes it the ideal gift when you’re as cheap as I am.

perhaps a key ingredient in my personal hell is that nobody recognizes the precedence of nobility over commoners.

“Fear can be a useful friend—but it’s never a good master.”

Never drink small if it’s at someone else’s expense.

The Broken Empire never had a big demand for slaves. We have peasants. Much the same thing, and they think they’re free so they never run off.

“Give him what he wants,” Jorg had said. “Then take what you want. Nobody is more vulnerable than in their moment of victory, and you know that whatever you do this man will never let you go while he lives.”

water will only take the stains you can see.

If there’s one thing that will get me to do half an honest day’s work it’s the conviction that doing so will make me safer.

Pride lets a man be skewered on the point of other people’s expectations.

“A life lived well is one you’re not prepared to compromise just in order to draw it out for another day.”

Reading out the list of things I would do to live another day would consume all of the extra day in question.

“A lie may be built of many truths, and the truth fashioned from innumerable falsehoods stacked heaven-high.”

In the end we all fail.

I’m a liar and a cheat and a coward, but I will never, ever, rarely let a friend down.