Brian > Brian's Quotes

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Time promised everything and delivered nothing.”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“...I reflected that odds were that not a lot of clandestine meetings involving mystical assassination, theft of arcane power, and the balance of power in the realms of the supernatural had taken place in a Wal-Mart Super Center.”
― Jim Butcher

“Strange how the past was remade to suit the present.”
― Steven Erikson, Reaper's Gale

“And now the page before us blurs.
An age is done. The book must close.
We are abandoned to history.
Raise high one more time the tattered standard
Of the Fallen. See through the drifting smoke
To the dark stains upon the fabric.
This is the blood of our lives, this is the
Payment of our deeds, all soon to be
Forgotten.
We were never what people could be.
We were only what we were.

Remember us.”
― Steven Erikson, The Crippled God

“Karsa reached down, gathered the skeletal figure into his arms, and then settled back. ‘I stepped over corpses on the way here,’ the Toblakai said. ‘People no one cared about, dying alone. In my barbaric village this would never happen, but here in this city, this civilized jewel, it happens all the time. (...) What is your name?’
‘Munug.’
‘Munug. This night – before I must rise and walk into the temple – I am a village. And you are here, in my arms. You will not die uncared for.’
‘You – you would do this for me? A stranger?’
‘In my village no one is a stranger – and this is what civilization has turned its back on. One day, Munug, I will make a world of villages, and the age of cities will be over. And slavery will be dead, and there shall be no chains – tell your god. Tonight, I am his knight.’
Munug’s shivering was fading. The old man smiled. ‘He knows.’
It wasn’t too much, to take a frail figure into one’s arms for those last moments of life. Better than a cot, or even a bed in a room filled with loved ones. Better, too, than an empty street in the cold rain. To die in someone’s arms – could there be anything more forgiving?
Every savage barbarian in the world knew the truth of this.”
― Steven Erikson, The Crippled God

“The saying goes, ‘The black tides of heaven direct the courses of human lives.’ To which a wise teacher said, ‘But as with all waters, one can swim against the tide.”
― J.Y. Yang, The Black Tides of Heaven

“Harrow said, with some difficulty: "I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it."
"Yes you can, it's just less great and less hot," said Gideon."
"Fuck you, Nav—”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“While we were developing common sense, she studied the blade.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“She had left Harrowhark a note on her vastly underused pillow— WHATS WITH THE SKULLS? and received only a terse— Ambiance.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“You didn’t have your original thumb and I’d touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date, but you were fine.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“She said, “What is this internet?” And he said, “See, I did make a utopia.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“I'm not fucking dead," I said, which wasn't even true, and I was choking up; everything I'd ever done, everything I'd ever been through, and I was choking up.
As the Emperor of the Nine Houses, the Necrolord Prime, stood from his chair to look at you-- at me; looked at your face, looked at my eyes in your face. It took, maybe, a million myriads. The static in your ears resolved into wordless screaming his expression was just--gently quizzical; mildly awed.
"Hi, Not Fucking Dead," he said. "I'm Dad.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“So Alecto, wearied of talking, kneeled upon the rock and offered up the sword to her, and placed the child’s hand upon the blade, so that it received also the red blood of the child. This made the child exceeding faint, but it did not swoon of weariness.

Which strength pleased Alecto, who said: Notwithstanding, I offer you my service.

To which a voice on the opposite side of the shore was raised, exceeding wroth, and Alecto heard it shout in a very great shout: Get in line, thou big slut.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“She wants the D," I said. And: "The D stands for dead.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“Again, let me say: sorry. It was not my thumb to let them bite off. I admit completely that this was my bad, but these motherfuckers had a hunger that only thumbs could satisfy.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“And the first child asked: Dost thou oppose me, and thou half-dead?

And the second child said, I am as one half-dead, but you would be two-halves dead, bitch.

To which the first child said, My sweet, I only die of longing for thee.

And the other child said, Then perish.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“You’ve got two scientists and an engineer and a nun and a lawyer and a banker and a cop and an artist. That’s not a defence force, that’s a cop and six different kinds of nerd.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Then Gandalf said: ‘Let us not stay at the door, for the time is urgent. Let us enter! For it is only in the coming of Aragorn that any hope remains for the sick that lie in the House. Thus spake Ioreth, wise-woman of Gondor: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice