Paladin's Hope (The Saint of Steel, #3)

by T. Kingfisher

“Well, if you want my professional opinion, this great goddamn hole in his chest is probably what killed him.”

The one advantage police had over paladins was that guards had no problem believing that someone would randomly shove pointy logs into other people. Paladins generally took a little longer to get there. Piper suspected that their sense of innocence and moral outrage kept regrowing, possibly through divine means.

The thing that no one warned you about insanity was how incredibly tedious it was. You were always having to explain yourself and apologize, over and over, and you got so tired of being crazy.

“If they’d just get better care immediately afterward…but no, everybody gets it in their head that childbirth is natural and any fool could do it. Cows give birth, so why not people?

Once a thing is made, it exists in the mind of the world. The next one is easier to make, and the next one after that.”

“It’s a noble sentiment, but you can’t ask people to pour themselves out for something that doesn’t care and can’t be fixed and at the end they’re empty and nothing changes.”

Maybe a hero is just what we call someone who doesn’t have the sense to stop before they destroy themselves.”

his back was informing him that what had been acceptable at twenty was no longer acceptable when one could see forty on the horizon.

“I suppose there’s no point in telling you that you’re a decent human being and all that?” “Would it work on you?” “Good god, no.”

Eventually, he went to prayer and the bottle, the two great comforters of humanity since the discovery of gods and yeasts.