Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time, #11)

by Robert Jordan

Mat wanted to look away, and could not. Bloody Aes Sedai! The woman almost certainly was dead, and yet she still tried coercing him into being a hero. Well, heroes got patted on the head and pushed out of the way until the next time a hero was needed, if they survived being a hero in the first place. Very often heroes did not.

“I think your life might make a story,” the general said, her expression inviting him to tell as much of it as he would. “I’d rather my life were ordinary,” he told her. Stories were no place for a man who wanted peace.

War with Trollocs was like war with rabid dogs. You killed them, or they killed you. There was no parley, no surrender, no middle ground.

Min was suddenly at Rand’s side, wrapping her arm around his. “No,” he said firmly. He was not about to take her into a possible trap. “We’ll talk about it,” she murmured, the bond filling with stubborn resolve. The most dire words a woman can say short of “I’m going to kill you,”

“A beautiful battle is one you don’t have to fight,”

Well, he had never claimed to understand women. If he could not understand the woman he was married to, which he could not half the time, then it was unlikely he ever would understand the rest of them.