Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor, #2)

by Mark Lawrence

Those who rule us stamp upon rage for they see it clearly, knowing it for the fire that it is, and who invites such hungry flames among that which they possess?

There is a purity in rage. It will burn out sorrow. For a time. It will burn out fear. Even cruelty and hatred will seek shelter, rage wants none of them, only to destroy.

‘I am my own cage.’ She lifts her sword. ‘And I have opened the door.’

‘But I must warn you, sister, that a sickness runs in me, and if you fashion yourself my enemy I will make a ruin of your life, for I am born of war.’

‘A devil got my tongue,’ Nona said. ‘I should have held it more tightly.’

‘There are some lessons that must be written in scars.’

‘A parent’s grief runs deeper than words can reach, novice. We speak them to help ourselves.’

‘Disguise,’ Sister Apple said, ‘is as much about changing your mind as about changing your appearance.

His smile held only winter.

The understanding that power corrupts is an idea older than the language we repeat it in.

The world might have narrowed but it was still a big place and somewhere in it there would be a spot for her.

‘Where am I?’ Confusion in his voice, the drug taking hold again. ‘I’m in my own cage?’ ‘We all are,’ Nona said.

In any game of bets and forfeit the bluff was always of more importance than whatever might be written on the cards held tight against your chest.

‘Spend too long watching the long game and the short game will kill you.’

Nothing is as cruel as a righteous man.

It seemed so long ago when Judge Irvone had pronounced, ‘This is a poor decision, abbess,’ and she had replied, ‘Even so.’ And had with two words toppled the first domino.

‘The greatest threat to any faith is not other faiths or beliefs but the corruption and division of its own message.

‘We always hope that other people will see past the skin and bones we wear, Regol.

‘Murder the wrong man and he’ll kill you.’

‘My father told me, your weaknesses have more to teach you than your strengths.’

You may be rocks but humanity is the tide and you only have to stand upon the sand to see how that contest concludes.