The Darkness That Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing, #1)

by R. Scott Bakker

“No soul moves alone through the world, Leweth. Our every thought stems from the thoughts of others. Our every word is but a repetition of words spoken before. Every time we listen, we allow the movements of another soul to carry our own.”

There was nothing the ignorant prized more than the ignorance of others.

Ink might be immortal, but meaning was not.

“You’re right, of course.” Nautzera had the most infuriating way of owning one’s objections.

With Inrau, forgiveness preceded rather than followed transgression. Do what you will, his eyes said, for you are already forgiven.

To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so? —AJENCIS, THE EPISTEMOLOGIES

Some events mark us so deeply that they find more force of presence in their aftermath than in their occurrence. They are moments that rankle at becoming past, and so remain contemporaries of our beating hearts. Some events are not remembered—they are relived.

Where power was perceived, power was given.

But he also possessed, as all great leaders must, a keen eye for those fruit that ripen out of season.

You’re young. You wouldn’t understand my motives. The young can never see life for what it is: a knife’s edge, as thin as the breaths that measure it. What gives it depth isn’t memory. I’ve memories enough for ten men, and yet my days are as thin and as shadowy as the greased linen the poor stretch over their windows. No, what gives life depth is the future. Without a future, without a horizon of promise or threat, our lives have no meaning. Only the future is real,

“Look at your eyes! More squint than a monkey’s asshole!”

Like life, games were governed by rules. But unlike life, games were utterly defined by those rules. The rules were the game, and if one played by different rules, then one simply played a different game. Since a fixed framework of rules determined the meaning of every move as a move, games possessed a clarity that made life seem a drunken brawl by comparison. The proprieties were indubitable, the permutations secure; only the outcome was shrouded.

“No man has wit enough to reason with a fool,

She had always been a bad one for that. Giving selfish gifts.

“Men are dogs. The only difference is they sniff asses with their eyes.”

Where Achamian was ignorant of the answers, Sarcellus was ignorant of the questions.

What lions kill, she had thought, they do not murder. And what nobles take, they do not steal.

A smile, no bigger than the curl of a toenail.

We seek absolute awareness, the self-moving thought. The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?

Only knowing the sources of thought and action allows us to own our thoughts and our actions, to throw off the yoke of circumstance.

If these circumstances were to be owned, then everything had to be measured.

“What comes before determines what comes after,” Kellhus continued. “For the Dûnyain, there’s no higher principle.” “And just what comes before?” Cnaiür asked, trying to force a sneer. “For Men? History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.”

Measure is unceasing.

In desperate times, Cnaiür knew, men rationed nothing so jealously as tolerance. They were more strict in their interpretation of custom and less forgiving of uncommon things.

Proyas suffered, as all men of high purpose must, the endless exchange of principles for advantages. No triumph without remorse. No respite without siege. Compromise after anxious compromise, until one’s entire life felt a defeat.

He looked hungry, not in the way of beggars but in the way of wolves.

The silences between men are always fraught with uncomfortable significance—accusations, hesitations, judgements of who is weak and who is strong

“To be utterly free of bestial appetite. To utterly command the unfolding of circumstance. To be the perfect instrument of Logos and so attain the Absolute.”

Fear has many forms, but it is never so dangerous as when it is combined with power and perpetual uncertainty.