Blood of Elves (The Witcher, #1)

by Andrzej Sapkowski

Children of elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, quarter-elves and toddlers of mysterious provenance neither knew nor recognised racial or social divisions. At least, not yet.

“Songs and ballads” – the musician bowed – “never end, dear lady, because poetry is eternal and immortal, it knows no beginning, it knows no end—

Verily, there is nothing so hideous as the monsters, so contrary to nature, known as witchers for they are the offspring of foul sorcery and devilry. They are rogues without virtue, conscience or scruple, true diabolic creations, fit only for killing. There is no place amidst honest men for such as they.

Intolerance and superstition has always been the domain of the more stupid amongst the common folk and, I conjecture, will never be uprooted, for they are as eternal as stupidity itself. There, where mountains tower today, one day there will be seas; there where today seas surge, will one day be deserts. But stupidity will remain stupidity.

she had been guided by the greyish-white wall of mountains and their snow-capped summits which glistened gold in those rare moments when the sun pierced the clouds – usually in the morning or just before sunset.

When you know about something it stops being a nightmare. When you know how to fight something, it stops being so threatening.

for it is well known that nothing is such thirsty work as the acquisition of knowledge.

I know you’re almost forty, look almost thirty, think you’re just over twenty and act as though you’re barely ten.

You have made a mistake. You mistook the stars reflected in the surface of the lake at night for the heavens.

There are many stories about magical animals but really, apart from the dragon, the cat is the only creature which can absorb the force. No one knows why a cat absorbs it and what it does with it…