The King's Blood Quotes

“Words are empty until you fill them, and how you fill them shapes the world.”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“She stepped toward him, her hand on his shoulder. He took her fingers in his, kissing her gently without even being aware that he was doing so. Affection was a habit between them, more genuine for being unconsidered.”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“You only have to enforce boundaries where they’re being imposed,”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“Over the proof that someone can be both certain and wrong. In my mind, I began to reserve judgment even on the revelations of the goddess. I cultivated the word probably. Was the temple swept? Yes, probably. But perhaps not. The goddess was eternal and just and immune to all lies, probably. We were her beloved and chosen, probably. But perhaps we weren’t. I became very aware of the division between truth and certainty. I began to doubt. And once I was on that path, there was no hiding it.”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“I’m not drunk,” Cithrin said. “You aren’t,” Yardem agreed. “Then why can’t I have another glass?” “Because that’s how you stay not drunk.”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“Truth and lies, doubt and certainty. I haven't found them to be what I thought they were. I dislike certainty because it feels like truth, but it isn't. And I think I have had some inkling what it is for a whole people to become certain."
"And what's that like, then?"
"It's like pretending something, and then forgetting you were pretending. It's falling into a dream. If justice is based on certainty, but certainty is not truth, atrocities become possible. We're seeing the first of them now. More will come.”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“They were dead. Their city, their empire, the truths they had learned at their nurses’ breasts. Like the first pale mark of leprosy, the rot had touched their city, and none of them could see it for what it was. Nor,”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“I dislike certainty because it feels like truth, but it isn’t. And I think I have had some inkling what it is for a whole people to become certain.”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“The nature of history itself defies us. To know with certainty what the last Dragon Emperor thought or planned or schemed would require not only an understanding of the draconic mind lost to humanity (if indeed it were ever available), but also a comprehension of the particular form of madness which took him in the violent days that ended his reign. Certain facts are known: that Morade’s clutch-mates contested his selection to the throne, that the battle between them raged for three human generations, that their end marked the opening of the ages of humanity. But these are generalities. Vagaries”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“justice is based on certainty, but certainty is not truth, atrocities become possible.”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“It was the fate of all reforms that they turned against the reformers.”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“What had been a shared moment was private now, and always would be. Even if he were to tell the story, it would be a tale told and not the thing itself. The difference between those two was the division between life and death: a lived moment and one entombed.”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood