Three Parts Dead Quotes

“He drinks the life of those who come too close to him. Steals their youth. Also,” she said after a pause, “he moisturizes.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“The God Wars had not been a pleasant time for Craftsmen and Craftswomen around the world. One day, you’re a simple thaumaturge, idly meddling in matters man was not meant to comprehend. The next, a collection of beings as old as humanity, with legions of followers, declare war on your “kind”, and neighbours who once thought you a harmless eccentric with a fondness for mystic sigils and foul unguents see you as an affront to Creation.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Be careful. As if something’s going to jump us in a library.”
“You might be surprised.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how people say a book is really gripping?”
“Don’t tell me…” Cat trailed off.
“Libraries can be dangerous.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Put not your trust in things, but in men. And women.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Gods, like men, can die. They just die harder, and smite the earth with their passing.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“For half a century he had stood too close to darkness, and some it crept into his bones.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“A thousand prickling tender touches lit upon her, as if she was caught in a rainstorm and the raindrops were love.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“The course of action for which you argue in your papers, not to mention your private life, would make Craftsmen and Craftswomen no better than the tyrant deities we overthrew in that damn war.” “Language, Elayne.” “My apologies,” she said after another sip of vodka. “One gets carried away when one feels one’s dinner companion has made an inexcusable moral error.” *”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Yes,” she said. “It makes you the most stupid, single-minded collection of religious fanatics I’ve ever come across. I mean,” she amended as growls rose about her and green eyes narrowed, “I could not imagine ever doing something like that, but it’s terribly sweet.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“So you assume we go around painting ourselves with pitch and swooping from rooftops to devour innocents, and call ourselves things like Shale Swiftwing, Beloved of the Goddess, Scout-in-Shadows.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“They found the Infirmary of Justice much as they had left it: white institutional walls, too-bright floors, and a reassuring smell of antiseptic. Reassuring at least to Tara, because the smell signalled that the people running this infirmary knew about antiseptic.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Religious men often think about death, and Abelard had given some thought to his last words. “I told you so” had not been on the list. The”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Engineers: they spend so much time solving physical problems and obeying physical rules, they forget that nonphysical phenomena obey rules every bit as strict.” Tara”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“The brain shuts down, and the soul watches from a distance as the body tumbles at ever-increasing speed toward doom. This is because, though instinct is good at many things, it’s stupid about death.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“She screamed. Not a normal scream of pain, but a deep and blind cry as reason deserted her. Of all the screams cataloged in the encyclopedic audio library of the Hidden Schools, Tara’s bore the closest resemblance to the scream of a man whose abdomen was being devoured by a jagged-clawed insect that wore a child’s face.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Affairs had fallen out better this time than forty years ago, but still he yearned for the water. Land lied to the feet, and to the soul. You stand, it whispered, upon unchanging ground. You build upon certainty, and your foundations will never crumble.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Craft could transport the soul to wage war on strange planes above the corpses of dead gods, but ultimately there were few places more pleasant than the bag of dancing meat and bones that was a living body.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“The key difference between gods and men in the manner of their dying was that men possessed only two deep obligations: to the earth, from which came their flesh, and to the stars, from which came their soul. Neither earth nor stars were particularly concerned about the return on their investment. Humans were very good at adding order to the earth, and enlivening the world of the stars with ideas and myth. When a human being died, nobody had a vested interest in keeping her around.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“One gets carried away when one feels one’s dinner companion has made an inexcusable moral error.” *”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“He drinks the life of those who come too close to him. Steals their youth. Also,” she said after a pause, “he moisturizes.” She”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“And she accepted the bridge date from the tentacled horror, with the proviso that her schedule would be inflexible for the next several weeks. Up”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Riding broomsticks, consorting with unholy powers. Who has the time for such pleasantries anymore? Why, I haven’t been on a date since the late eighties.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Too few see a metropolis from its peak. Those who do are a strange mix of the city's angels and its demons, those who hold the strings and those who never rose far enough to have strings tied around them. A penthouse apartment has much the same view as a cardboard box on a tenement roof. The resident of each drinks his wine and calls the other a fool, and seldom is either certain in his laughter.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“A penthouse apartment has much the same view as a cardboard box on a tenement roof. The resident of each drinks his wine and calls the other a fool, and seldom is either certain in his laughter.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“His hair scratched her palm like a nest of wires.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“The rooftops of a great city present a panorama unlike anything else in the world. A range of giant gumdrop karst formations may impress, a deep canyon awe, a jungle canopy stun into silence, but cities alone are the product of human hands and human tools, human blood and human will. They come into being with worship, or not at all.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“One gets carried away when one feels one’s dinner companion has made an inexcusable moral error.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Before this case is over, Abelard, you may have to choose between the city you believe you inhabit, and Alt Coulumb as it exists in truth. What choice will you make?”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“James doesn’t sound like a Deathless King – type name to me.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“A gargoyle’s howl, like a poet’s, resounds from spirit to spirit within the walls of a city.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead