Empire of the Vampire (Empire of the Vampire, #1)

by Jay Kristoff

“I am put in mind of apples and the distances they fall from their trees.”

War doesn’t teach you to be a killer,’ he told me once. ‘It’s just a key that opens our door. There’s a beast in all men’s blood, Gabriel. You can starve him. Cage him. Curse him. But in the end, you pay the beast his due, or he takes his due from you.’

My mama knew herself, and there’s a fearsome power in that. Knowing exactly who you are and exactly what you’re capable of. Most folk would call it arrogance, I suppose. But most folk are fucking fools.”

“Too much hate will burn a man to cinders, Chevalier.” “Oui. But at least he’ll die warm.”

“There’s no misery so deep as one you face by yourself. No nights darker than ones you spend alone. But you can learn to live with any weight. Your scars grow thick enough, they become armor.

there’s a difference between those who swim with the flood and those who drown fighting it. And its name is Wisdom.

“The graveyards of the world are full of fools who thought of fear as anything but a friend.”

“Everyone has an empty place inside,” Gabriel sighed. “You can try to fill it with whatever you like. Wine. Women. Work. In the end, a hole is still a hole.” “And sooner or later, you all crawl back into your favorite one,” the vampire said.

God didn’t want me. And the devil was afraid to open the door.’

“Some people are born lucky, coldblood. And some people make their own.”

“See, I never understood that. Why pride is looked on as an evil. You work hard at something you’re not born good at? Damn right you should be fucking proud. There’s nothing comes of quitting besides the knowledge you didn’t finish.”

we might not ever taste triumph, but at least we dared to fail. We stand apart from those cowards whispering on the sidelines about how the strong did stumble, while never daring to set foot in the ring themselves.

The only thing worse than finishing last is not beginning at all.

You feed a man your table scraps, he grows hungry long before he grows thin.

There is no hell so cruel as powerlessness.’

“The only thing worse than a fool is a fool who thinks himself wise.”

They say the best revenge is living well, but there’s still a lot to be said for dancing beneath the blood moons in a cloak made of your enemy’s skin.

Hero,’ he scoffed. ‘Mark my words, youngblood. You don’t want to be a hero. Heroes die unpleasant deaths, far from home and hearth.’

But there’s a strange and fierce love forged in the fires of combat. A brotherhood written only in blood. Even among men who’d normally loathe each other.

Your past is stone, but your future is clay. And you decide the shape of the life you’ll make.’

There is a time for grief, and a time for songs, and a time to recall with fondness all that has been and gone. But there is a time for killing too. There is a time for blood, and a time for rage, and a time to close your eyes and become the thing heaven wants you to be.

Let the dark know my name and despair. So long as it burns, I am the flame. So long as it bleeds, I am the blade. So long as it sins, I am the saint. “‘And I am silver.’

‘Old age and treachery can always overcome youth and skill.’

‘If we spend all our lives in darkness, is it any wonder when darkness starts to live in us?’

But the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

“When there’s little you can do, do what little you can.

But it’s a fool who looks with more fondness to the days behind than the ones ahead. And it’s a man drenched in defeat who sings that sad refrain; that things were better then.

“It’s a fool who plays at the precipice, but only the prince of fools blames another when he falls.

one hand holding a sword is worth ten thousand clasped in prayer.

The simple wonder of books.