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laughter faded, and she leaned against the wall, scraping her sour tongue clean on her teeth. ‘The higher you climb, the further you have to fall, and the greater the spectacle when you hit the ground.
Trouble with the good fight, I find … once the fight starts, the good stops.’
those who strive and fail are as blessed as those who succeed.’
But then it’s difficult, isn’t it, to make a passionate argument for what you already have? So boring. Whereas the delightful alternative? A bouquet of promises! A sackful of dreams! A glorious ship of fantasies, undamaged by collision with actually getting anything done.’
You’ll never hold up someone who can’t swim for themselves. In the end, they’ll drag you down with them.
She wondered if it helped, to believe in God. Whether it was reassuring or terrifying, to look at all this shit and know for sure it was part of some grand plan.
‘You can’t change the fact the world’s full of arseholes. You can only change how you deal with them.’
That’s the trouble with songs. They tend to stop before it all turns to shit.
Dwelling on your mistakes does no one any good.’
‘Surprise makes brave men cowards, strong men weak, wise men fools.’
But you can’t just choose to believe, can you?
‘Living kings are always objects of derision. But people cannot wait to worship the dead ones. Someone must lead. Someone must make the hard choices. For everyone’s benefit.’
Truly, as he loved to say, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
‘What kind of wizard is he?’ Her father frowned up at Bayaz’s towering statue. ‘The kind you obey.’
‘Fear is like cold water. A little is a fine thing, it fixes you on what counts. But too much will freeze you. You must make a box inside your mind, and put your fear inside, and lock it.’
It’s easy to scream about the fence when you’re on the wrong side of it. Some mad twist of fortune lands you on the right side, though, the fence starts to look like it might not be such a bad idea. Might even be worth all the sacrifices. Other people’s sacrifices aren’t that hard to make.
‘Who cares a shit what they think?’ shouted Tunny, jerking forward and stabbing at Orso with the stem of his pipe. ‘Long as they bloody obey! You’re king, boy! Not me, not Yolk and not Leo dan bloody Brock! You! Now, I daresay being king has its downsides but I can tell you there are worse jobs.’ ‘Huh,’ grunted one of the girls, adjusting her bodice. ‘All this bloody self-pity. It was fun when you were a crown prince, but fuck, it doesn’t suit a king.’
They said he’d been the best of his kind. The last straight edge. Closest friend to the Bloody-Nine, worst enemy to Black Dow, who’d fought for Bethod and fought against him, across the North and back. Red Hat shouted out a story about the fight in the High Places. Oxel barked one about the Siege of Adua. Hardbread talked of the Battle of Osrung, folk murmuring with every famous name – Curnden Craw and Whirrun of Bligh and Cairm Ironhead and Glama
Golden. He started at a creaky murmur, white hair plastered to his liver-spotted pate, but by the end he was glaring lightning and bellowing thunder as he told of the high deeds done in the valleys of the past. Old men made young again in the fire of those memories, just for a moment.
‘The one undeniable thing about the future,’ murmured Orso’s mother in Styrian, ‘is that it comes to you, ready or not, without need for a conveyance.’
They say belief is righteous, but to Muslan only doubt was divine. From doubt flows curiosity, and knowledge, and progress. From belief flows only ignorance and decay.
We all are carried into the future, always. What greets us when we arrive, that is the pressing question.
If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that there’s rarely any need to wade into the bitter ocean for your vengeance. It’ll wash up on the shore soon enough.’
Can’t solve every problem with your fist. Sometimes brain and mouth are better weapons.’
‘Has it ever occurred to you that the more choice there is, the harder it becomes to choose?’
Probably Savine should have felt sorry for them, but her pity was soluble in heavy rain, apparently, and what she had left she needed for herself.
Instead, she had fanned the flames. Instead, she had rolled the dice. And what for? Ambition. That snake twisted tight about her innards whose hunger grew sharper the more it was fed. Whose hunger could never be satisfied.
