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His lunch had left his belly and mouth like something was pursuing it.
The higher you build your Tower, the more tempting a target for fate it becomes.”
“Let us three agree a compact, shall we? I shall forgive you for being obtuse, disloyal and selfish if you two forgive me for seeming to have expressed my orders by way of a question, with the implication that there is any choice whatsoever on your part. What d’you say?”
There was no right and wrong, there was simply effectiveness and inability, might and weakness, cunning and gullibility.
But he knew the truth, which was that to be king was only to be the biggest bully in a race of bullies and bullied, the greatest braggart charlatan in a species of blustering priests and cowed acolytes with nary a thought to rub between them.
Ruthlessness, will, the absolute application of force and power; these were what secured authority and dominance.
A temple was worth a dozen barracks; a militia man carrying a gun could control a small unarmed crowd only for as long as he was present; however, a single priest could put a policeman inside the head of every one of their flock, for ever.
they seem to exist more in the minds of those who oppose them most fervently than in awkward reality.”
‘One hundred idiots make idiotic plans and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot, whose plan succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he’s a genius.’
Fear lasted a week, anger a year and resentment a lifetime,
Was it more honourable to starve than to steal? Many people would say yes, though rarely those who’d actually experienced an empty belly, or a child whimpering with its own hunger.
