Last Argument of Kings (The First Law, #3)

by Joe Abercrombie

If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?

But you can’t truly hate a man without loving him first, and there’s always a trace of that love left over.

“I hope you aired the suitable level of contempt. Power for the people?” sneered Bayaz. “They don’t want it. They don’t understand it. What the hell would they do with it if they had it? The people are like children. They are children. They need someone to tell them what to do.”

“Government is tyranny. At its best it is dressed in pretty colours.”