Caine's Law Quotes

“Being old enough to know better but still too young to resist mostly sucks.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“Every time a horse let you up onto its back, it’s giving you its life. Every time.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“I swear to you on any kind of sacred whateverthefuck you favor: if I live through this I will absolutely start taking your advice."
"That'll look nice on your headstone.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“Good and evil have nothing to do with gods. It has to do with us.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“169. We whip them. Starve them. Chain them. Break their spirits. Break their minds. Still they love us. Still they offer up their lives without hesitation. Because when a horse loves you, it’s fucking absolute. And all they ask is that you love them back. Most of them never get even that.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“How can he love being... that? Being what Caine is?"
"Because he's an asshole," she says. "You must have noticed.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“That’s what getting old is: When you can no longer bear the consequences of being wrong.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“Everything’s forever until it isn’t.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“A girl likes to be asked, dumbass.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“If I have to make moves in her, we'll all get bloody. You, go wake up Raithe. Tell him Hari's waiting to see him. He'll come with you."
"Hari?" He frowned like he wasn't sure if he was being kidded. "Of what abbey? In what land?"
"Hari of Do as You're Told in the land of And Shut the Fuck Up.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“Do you think I’d start a war without knowing how to end it?”
“You’ve done it at least three times that I know of!”
“Ah sure, bring up the truth.”

Caine and T'Passe”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“You assume that I don’t know and I do care. The truth is the other way around.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“And so, here at the end of days, you are as you’ve always been. Willing to die. Not willing to quit”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“I am also, well… I’m in awe. He’s killed people, and saved people. He’s fought monsters, and he’s fought men who became monsters. He’s saved kingdoms and toppled empires. Now he has set himself against the gods to save a universe… and I used to change his diapers. I used to yell at him to make his bed.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“It may be there’s such a thing as a tool than can’t be used as a weapon, but I’ve never met one.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“If you have to justify an action, you probably shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“I have known you since the world was born. Everything you are is what you should be. Everything you should be is what you are. I know all of you, and there is nothing in you I do not love.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“The hope crashes into reality and people get hurt.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“Should’s nothing like is.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“Names are masks, they get in the way.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“Be not afraid, child. Be what you are.”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“It’s desperate in life to be beloved of God.”
“Depends on the God.”
“Does it?”
“Christ, I hope so.”

the horse-witch and Caine”
― Matthew Stover, Caine's Law

“Other than me and a few Monastic scholars and operatives, the only person who really understands the oil—who understands the true nature of the blind god—is my dad. He called it the shared will of the human race, and that’s closer to true than, y’know, any of those elvish legends he got the name from. The blind god is an expression of human nature, and the black oil is only an expression of the blind god’s power. It’s not evil. People are evil. “That’s the whole thing, right there. Good and evil has nothing to do with gods. It has to do with us. The blind god destroys because we do. But we also create.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Caine's Law

“He says humanity can’t be taken from a person, but it can be surrendered. He says every one of you surrendered your humanity when you became the willing tool of oppression. Get it? You’re not even really alive. You’re tools. Inanimate objects. Hammers. Saws. Whatever. You should know that I don’t share this opinion either. “He’s giving you fuckers too much credit. “You’re people just like anybody else.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Caine's Law

“I don’t rescue people. I don’t do nonviolent resistance, and I don’t work to change the system from within. You need to remember what I am. What you wanted me to be. “Remember. Remember when I come for you. “Remember it didn’t have to be this way.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Caine's Law

“And that’s why—I really think this is true—that’s why I just about drank myself to death after For Love of Pallas Ril. Because I let the fuckers co-opt me. I traded them everything I’ve ever done—everything I’ve ever been—for a nice house, money, and something resembling a normal family. I let them make me into the kind of fucker I had spent the best of my life destroying. I left this shitty world shitty, because it got me what I wanted. That’s about to change.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Caine's Law

“the guys I aim for are the guys who have the power to make shit better, but they don’t. Because keeping things shitty gets them what they want.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Caine's Law

“I like hurting people who think they can’t be hurt. Who think that money or power or God or whateverthefuck makes them invulnerable. Invincible. Omnipotent. I really, really like proving them wrong.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Caine's Law

“I finally figured it out: I don’t like hurting people. I never did. What I like is hurting people in charge. There’s a reason kings hide when they hear I’m in town.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Caine's Law

“told me fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. I think he was wrong. I think the more you fear God, the scarier God gets. Fear His Anger, and He starts tossing thunderbolts and earthquakes and whatever. Fear His punishment, and He gives you eternal damnation. People need to know they don’t have to be afraid. It’s God who has to be afraid.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Caine's Law