The Blinding Knife Quotes

“Love is not a whim. Love is not a flower that fades with a few fleeting years. Love is a choice wedded to action, my husband, and I choose you, and I will choose you every day for the rest of my life.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“If you are not free to say no, your yes is meaningless.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Evil is simple and empty. Evil has no mysterious depths. We stare into a dark hole and fill it with our fears, but it is only a hole.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Bewildered as he might be, sometimes a man's highest calling is simply to stand, and hug.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“You’ll come with us,” she said.
“Sure,” Gavin said.
“It wasn’t a request.”
“Yes it was,” Gavin said. “When you don’t have power to compel obedience, by definition you’re making a request.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Put on some armor. Just remember what's armor and what's you, so when it's time to take it off, you can.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“The master who fears the choices his people will make enough to take those choices away isn't worth serving.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Might doesn’t make right. Might makes reality.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Dangerous knowledge is often hidden under ponderous grammar and obscurantist vocabulary.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Idealists mature badly. If they can't outgrow their idealism, they become hypocrites or blind.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“ After a while, with nothing to lose, I'll only able to win.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“To be a man is to bring together that which you should be and that which you are. Deception is darkness.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“The truth is so dear to me that if Orholam stood on one side and truth on the other, I would turn my back on my creator himself.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Freedom isn't the highest good. Power is. For without power, your freedom can be taken.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Pacifism is a virtue indisguishable from cowardice.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“I've taken lives, and I've taken my own life in my hands and trusted a friend with it. Yes, sir, I'd say that makes me a man."
"Neither makes you a man. The first makes you a killer. The second makes you a fool. Either may get you killed.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Thank you, Promachos. For all you’ve done that I don’t know. For the prices you’ve paid that I can’t understand. For doing what others couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Thank you.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Less weight and less strength just means you need to be smarter.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“You're a great man, but only when seen from afar.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“ A lie told in the service of truth is virtue.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“There is no cheating in war; there are only survivors and victims.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Now,” Samite continued, “after Essel has just spent time warning you about generalities and how they often don’t apply, I’m going to use some. Because some generalities are true often enough that we have to worry about them. So here’s one: men will physically fight for status. Women, generally, are more clever. The why of it doesn’t matter: learned, innate, cultural, who cares? You see the chest-bumping, the name-calling, performing for their fellows, what they’re really doing is getting the juices flowing. That interval isn’t always long, but it’s long enough for men to trigger the battle juice. That’s the terror or excitation that leads people to fight or run. It can be useful in small doses or debilitating in large ones. Any of you have brothers, or boys you’ve fought with?” Six of the ten raised their hands. “Have you ever had a fight with them—verbal or physical—and then they leave and come back a little later, and they’re completely done fighting and you’re just fully getting into it? They look like they’ve been ambushed, because they’ve come completely off the mountain already, and you’ve just gotten to the top?” “Think of it like lovemaking,” Essel said. She was a bawdy one. “Breathe in a man’s ear and tell him to take his trousers off, and he’s ready to go before you draw your next breath. A woman’s body takes longer.” Some of the girls giggled nervously. “Men can switch on very, very fast. They also switch off from that battle readiness very, very fast. Sure, they’ll be left trembling, sometimes puking from it, but it’s on and then it’s off. Women don’t do that. We peak slower. Now, maybe there are exceptions, maybe. But as fighters, we tend to think that everyone reacts the way we do, because our own experience is all we have. In this case, it’s not true for us. Men will be ready to fight, then finished, within heartbeats. This is good and bad. “A man, deeply surprised, will have only his first instinctive response be as controlled and crisp as it is when he trains. Then that torrent of emotion is on him. We spend thousands of hours training that first instinctive response, and further, we train to control the torrent of emotion so that it raises us to a heightened level of awareness without making us stupid.” “So the positive, for us Archers: surprise me, and my first reaction will be the same as my male counterpart’s. I can still, of course, get terrified, or locked into a loop of indecision. But if I’m not, my second, third, and tenth moves will also be controlled. My hands will not shake. I will be able to make precision movements that a man cannot. But I won’t have the heightened strength or sensations until perhaps a minute later—often too late. “Where a man needs to train to control that rush, we need to train to make it closer. If we have to climb a mountain more slowly to get to the same height to get all the positives, we need to start climbing sooner. That is, when I go into a situation that I know may be hazardous, I need to prepare myself. I need to start climbing. The men may joke to break the tension. Let them. I don’t join in. Maybe they think I’m humorless because I don’t. Fine. That’s a trade I’m willing to make.” Teia and the rest of the girls walked away from training that day somewhat dazed, definitely overwhelmed. What Teia realized was that the women were deeply appealing because they were honest and powerful. And those two things were wed inextricably together. They said, I am the best in the world at what I do, and I cannot do everything. Those two statements, held together, gave them the security to face any challenge. If her own strengths couldn’t surmount an obstacle, her team’s strengths could—and she was unembarrassed about asking for help where she needed it because she knew that what she brought to the team would be equally valuable in some other situation.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“They made it so that we can’t change it from within. They made it so we must kill to break it. If we be monsters, we’re monsters made in their image.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“I feel a sudden, intense desire to throw a temper tantrum,”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Kip looked up at him and grinned. Don’t you know what I am? I’m the fucking turtle-bear.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“How do you know all this?” Delara asked.
“I’m the Prism,” Gavin said. “Five minutes.”
“You can’t treat us like this. We aren’t slaves to take your orders. What will you do if we don’t let you go?” Klytos Blue asked.
Turning cold eyes on the little man, Gavin said, “I’ll kill you and piss on your corpse.” He meant it.
Klytos Blue’s mouth dropped open. His wasn’t the only one.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“I'm asking you to make an adult decision. Are you ready to die, maybe alone, far from home, with no one even knowing what a hero you were? I can't even promise that your lives or your deaths will accomplish victory" - Ironfist, p156”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“I’m like the dog with a bone who crossed a low bridge in the fable. I see another dog passing beneath me carrying a bone, and I snap to take his bone—and drop my own into the water, into my reflection.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“They were deeply in love. Smitten. At their age. Sad.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“Weak men like humble women, especially great women who make them feel as inferior.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife