Company of Liars Quotes

“You've heard tales of beauty and the beast. How a fair maid falls in love with a monster and sees the beauty of his soul beneath the hideous visage. But you've never heard the tale of the handsome man falling for the monstrous woman and finding joy in her love, because it doesn't happen, not even in a story-teller's tale.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Rain slips through your fingers as easily as words blow away in the wind, and yet it has the power to destroy your whole world.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Home is the place you return to when you have finally lost your soul. Home is the place where life is born, not the place of your birth, but the place where you seek rebirth. When you no longer have to remember which tale of your own past is true and which is an invention, when you know that you are an invention, then is the time to seek out your home. Perhaps only when you have come to understand that can you finally reach home.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Reckon it's best if you don't have anyone you care about; then it can't hurt you. Don't have to be afraid of losing someone if you no one to lose.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“The day that I left my home, I had prayed that my children would forget me. I wanted to spare them the pain of remembering. But that night, as I crouched in the white mist, waiting, I knew more than anything that I wanted them to remember, I wanted desperately to go on living in someone's memory. If we are not remembered, we are more than dead, for it is as if we had never lived.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“But then, the flames of a fire are not made less painful by the knowledge that others are burning with you.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“We had taken her for granted until she was no longer there, like an ancient tree you don't truly see until it is felled, and then only from the empty space in the sky do you suddenly grasp its stature.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Are you finally admitting that you can sell a man hope? Have I at last succeeded in teaching you that?”

He laughed and flicked his whip again, harder. He was in a better mood than I had seen for months.

“No, Camelot, not hope. Hope is for the weak; have I not succeeded in teaching you that? To hope is to put your faith in others and in things outside yourself; that way lies betrayal and disappointment. They didn't want hope, Camelot; they wanted certainty. What a man needs is the certainty that he is right, no self-doubt, no fleeting thought that he might be wrong or misled. Absolute certainty that he is right—that's what gives a man the confidence and power to do whatever he wants and to take whatever he wants from this world and the next.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“I'd believed mine was the greatest of all the arts, the noblest of all the lies, the creation of hope. I thought hope could overcome everything, but I was wrong. Hope cannot overcome truth. Hope and truth cannot co-exist. Truth destroys hope. The most savage cruelties man inflicts on man are committed in the pursuit of truth. My last lie had been the most honest, the most honorable of them all, for there is an art greater even than the creation of hope. The greatest art of all is the destruction of truth.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“There was a new king and his name was pestilence. And he had created a new law - thou shalt do anything to survive.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Hope itself is always genuine. It's only what it's placed in that can prove to be false.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Hope is a beautiful lie and it requires talent to create it for others.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“God's hand can be seen in any occurrence for those who are determined to find it there, but then again, so can the devil's”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Hope may be an illusion, but it's what keeps you from jumping in the river or swallowing hemlock. Hope is a beautiful lie and it requires talent to create it for others. And back then on that day when they say it first began, I truly believed that the creation of hope was the greatest of all the arts, the noblest of all the lies. I was wrong.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Miracles are like murders. After the first one, each becomes easier than the last for, with each success, the miracle-worker's certainty in himself becomes stronger.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“My brave husband came back from fighting the Turks and brought me a robe of silk and a necklace of human teeth. He sat up at night by his hearth telling tales of battle. Apparently the Turks are ten times more ferocious and fearless than the Scots. 'Perhaps we should invite them here to drive the Scots back,' I suggested, and he laughed, but he didn't kiss me. That's when I learned the truth about scars. A man with a battle scar is a veteran, a hero, given an honoured place at the fire. Small boys gaze up fascinated, dreaming of winning such badges of courage. Maids caress his thighs with their buttocks as they bend over to mull his ale. Women cluck and cosset, and if in time other men grow a little weary of that tale of honour, then they call for his cup to be filled again and again until he is fuddled and dozes quietly in the warmth of the embers.

But a scarred woman is not encouraged to tell her story. Boys jeer and mothers cross themselves. Pregnant women will not come close for fear that if they look upon such a sight, the infant in their belly will be marked. You've heard of the tales of Beauty and the Beast no doubt. How a fair maid falls in love with a monster and sees the beauty of his soul beneath the hideous visage. But you've never heard the tale of the handsome man falling for the monstrous woman and finding joy in her love, because it doesn't happen, not even in fairytales. The truth is that the scarred woman's husband buys her a good thick veil and enquires about nunneries for the good of her health. He spends his days with his falcons and his nights instructing pageboys in their duties. For if nothing else, the wars taught him how to be a diligent master to such pretty lads.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“They were just the ordinary sounds of of people beginning their day, silly raucous, discordant, but they were the most beautiful sounds on earth, the sounds of living people.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“We couldn't bring the sheep back to life, so there was nothing for it but to eat the evidence.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“It is hard to bury your own children. It breaks your heart in a way no other death can ever do, for you are burying part of yourself in that grave.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“well,”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“I had seen that errible look on a man's face before, on the faces of those being dragged to the gallows. Some scream and plead, some swear and curse, some go serenely, convinced that the open gates of Paradise await them. But the worst, the most chilling, are those who neither fight nor embrace it, but accept it, their faces fixed in a look of utter hopelessness and despair. Their eyes stare out at you as if they are already the eyes of a dead man, and not a dead man in Paradise, but one who is in purgatory or worse, far worse.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Now, if we were lucky, no one would ever know they were lying down to sleep on top of a corpse. Perhaps we sleep on corpses every night do not know it.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Men say many things under the cover of darkness which, come the cold light of dawn, they bitterly regret revealing, and Zophiel was no exception. He was clearly furious that he'd been forced to confide in us the night before. And as usual with men like Zophiel, they don't blame themselves, but blame those who witness their moment of weakness. He was not going to forgive any of us for having seen his wretched state the night before and it was evident he had no intention of giving way to his fear again. But then, it is always easy to dismiss the terrors of the night when it is day, not so easy when darkness falls.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Some say the customer the cripples wedding dates back to the time before men were christian. It is said that marrying two cripples together in the graveyard at the community's expense well turn away Divine wrath and protect the village from whatever pestilence or sickness rages around it.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“The young man's buttocks gleamed round and firm in the lamplight, the pale brown skin stretched tight and flawless, so smooth that it made you long to reach out and stroke it. But for the nervous tightening of the muscles under the skin, they looked as if they belong to the statue of a god.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“the flames of a fire are not made less painful by the knowledge that others are burning with you.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“When a murderer touches their victim's corpse the wounds open and bleed again to show everyone who the murderer is. That means that one of you must have murdered him, doesn't it?”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Death by fire. That was something they all knew about, even those who hadn't seen it, hand't smelt the stench that hangs round a town for days, hadn't heard the screams that echo night after night through your dreams; even those who had not witnessed a burning had heard tell of it and shuddered.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“When a murderer their victim's corpse the wounds open and bleed again to show everyone who the murderer is. That means that one of you must have murdered him, doesn't it?”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“I killed him because he was a priest, because it is priests and pardoners who destroy the young and the beautiful, the innocent and the helpless. Christ showed us compassion. He showed us God's mercy, but they use his name to torment those they should care for. They make them ashamed of what is beautiful. They make them despise them and their own body.
There are many cruel men in this world. Men who rob and kill and prey on the weak, but at least they are honest. They do not claim it is God's will. They do not drive a man to despair and say they are doing it out of love for him. If they torture someone it is only in this world; they do not condemn him to hell to be tortured for all eternity. Only the priests and bishops do that.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars