Two Serpents Rise Quotes

“The trouble with atheism," Temoc said, "is that it offers a limited range of curses.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“And pretty is not even the right word. She burns. She's a verb.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“It’s art. If you’re looking at it, it’s working.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“Do not ignore dreams. They are a line from the past to the future. All nightmares are real.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“You wander through this city, and wonder if anything you do will make up for the horror that keeps the world turning. To live, you rip your own heart from your chest and hide it in a box somewhere, along with everything you ever learned about justice, compassion, mercy. You throw yourself into games to mark the time. And if you yearn for something different: what would you change? Would you bring back the blood, the dying cries, the sucking chest wounds? The constant war? So we’re caught between two poles of hypocrisy. We sacrifice our right to think of ourselves as good people, our right to think our life is good, our city is just. And so we and our city both survive.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“You live in a grim universe.”
“That’s risk management for you.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“You need more wildness in your life.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“You never appreciate things so much as in their absence.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“We all think we’re on our own side, until the time comes to declare war.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“Teo had once claimed that human history began with a storm: the interval between lightning and thunder, between flash and rumble felt in the body's core, was primitive man's first experiences of time -- the awakening of consciousness, the birth of the gods.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“Sixty years ago, these men and women broke the heavens, and made the gods weep. They had spent the time since learning how hard it was to run a world.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“Everyone likes to be needed.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“You are comfortable when violence is done by others on your behalf—when gods are imprisoned, when men are slain or reduced to slavery, you do not blink. But faced with the need to dirty your own hands, you shudder.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“Your system kills, too. You're not eliminated sacrifices [to gods], you're democratized them - everyone dies a little every day, and the poor and desperate are the worst injured.

We honored our sacrifices in the old days. You sneer at them.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“Well, here we are. Let’s change. Let’s change the world. Together.” “You sound like my father.” “Your father wants the gods back on their pedestals. I want us working as one: humans with Craft, gods with divine power, priests with Applied Theology. But we need space to build that society. We need the time and the power to change, and we’ll never have that time or power with Craftsmen crushing us. We need freedom, and I can win that freedom. Not in a decade or three. Today. In one stroke.” “You want a moderate revolution. You just need to kill a few people first.” “A few people. Yes. To free a city. To save a planet. Dresediel Lex will be a model for the world.” “I kind of like it the way it is.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“To desperation,” he said, and raised his glass. She raised hers as well, toward the altar.
“And to bleeding hearts,” she added, and they drank.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“I’ve gone from manager to knight in two days. I think I deserve a bump in salary.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“A beast sacred and profane bore him north, with a beautiful, terrifying woman, to defend a city wonderful in its horrors.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“I’m on a quest, I think,” he said, not having realised this before. “Or something like one.”
“Those went out of fashion a long time ago.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“We wait, and we rise; we move, and the earth trembles.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“We no longer empathize with the victim, lie with him on the slab. We forget, and believe forgetfulness is humane. We fool ourselves.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“Sanity was the gap between perception and desire,”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“Water is life, and life is worth any price, even life itself.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“There is one thing you must understand about destroying gods, boy.” “Only one?” “You must be ready to take their place.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“The trouble with atheism,” Temoc said, “is that it offers a limited range of curses.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“Teo had once claimed that human history began with a storm: the interval between lightning and thunder, between the flash and the rumble felt in the body’s core, was primitive man’s first experience of time—the awakening of consciousness, the birth of the gods.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“Dreaming, dying, counting time

We wait upon the days sublime

Living edge of dooméd earth

We wait for joy of bloody birth.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“You observe her rites and rules in the dealing of a hand or the shuffling of cards. You worship her, sure as a ballplayer sixty years ago worshipped the Twins or Ili of the Bright Sails or Qet Sea-Lord or Exchitli. For you, at least, the card game never ends. You’re an occasional priest—pledged to a goddess who only exists occasionally.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“She matched his steps, and by her body’s alchemy transformed his unfinished movements into gold.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“Great demons lived between the stars, and in them, beings immense in power and size, who sucked the marrow from suns and sang songs that drove galaxies mad. There”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise