Exile Quotes

“Joy multiplies when it is shared among friends, but grief diminishes with every division. That is life.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“As I became a creature of the empty tunnels, survival became easier and more difficult all at once. I gained in the physical skills and experience necessary to live on. I could defeat almost anything that wandered into my chosen domain. It did not take me long, however, to discover one nemesis that I could neither defeat nor flee. It followed me wherever I went - indeed, the farther I ran, the more it closed in around me. My enemy was solitude, the interminable, incessant silence of hushed corridors.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“We all are prisoners at one time or another in our lives, prisoners to ourselves or to the expectations of those around us. It is a burden that all people endure, that all people despise, and that few people ever learn to escape.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“There have been many times in my life when I have felt helpless. It is perhaps the most acute pain a person can know, founded in frustration and ventless rage. The nick of sword upon a battling soldier’s arm cannot compare to the anguish a prisoner feels at
the crack of a whip. Even if the whip does not strike the helpless prisoner’s body, it surely cuts deeply at his soul.
We all are prisoners at one time or another in our lives, prisoners to ourselves or to the expectations of those around us. It is a burden that all people endure, that all people despise, and that few people ever learn to escape.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“In my stubborn youth, I believed that I could stand alone, that I was strong enough to conquer my enemies with sword and with principles. Arrogance convinced me that by sheer determination, I could conquer helplessness itself. Stubborn and foolish youth, I
must admit, for when I look back on those years now, I see quite clearly that rarely did I stand alone and rarely did I have to stand alone. Always there were friends, true and dear, lending me support even when I believed I did not want it, and even when I did
not realize they were doing it.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Joy multiples when it is shared among friends, but grief diminishes with every division. That is life.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Driest displayed the intricate hand and facial combinations of the silent drow code, and he briefly entertained the notion of teaching the language to Belwar. The deep gnome promptly burst into loud and rolling laughter. His dark eyes looked incredulously at Drizzt, and he led the drow's gaze down to the ends of his arms. With a hammer and a pickaxe for hands, the svirfneblin could hardly muster enough gestures to make the effort worthwhile.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Spirit. In every language in all the Realms, surface and Underdark, in every time and every place, the word has a ring of strength and determination. It is the hero's strength, the mother's resilience and the poor man's armor. It cannot be broken and it cannot be taken away.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“All of his life had been filled with crashing ends to promising beginnings.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Friendship: the word has come to mean many different things among the various races and cultures of both the Underdark and the surface of the Realms. In Menzoberranzan, friendship is generally born out of mutual profit. While both parties are better off for the union, it remains secure. But loyalty is not a tenet of drow life, and as soon as a friend believes that he will gain more without the other, the union - and likely the other's life - will come to a swift end.
I have had few friends in my life, and if I live a thousand years, I suspect that this will remain true. There is little to lament in this fact, though, for those who have called me friend have been persons of great character and have enriched my existence, given it worth. First there was Zaknafein, my father and mentor who showed me that I was not alone and that I was not incorrect in holding to my beliefs. Zaknafein saved me, from both the blade and the chaotic, evil, fanatic religion that damns my people.
Yet I was no less lost when a handless deep gnome came into my life, a svirfneblin that I had rescued from certain death, many years before, at my brother Dinin's merciless blade. My deed was repaid in full, for when the svirfneblin and I again met, this time in the clutches of his people, I would have been killed - truly would have preferred death - were it not for Belwar Dissengulp.
My time in Blingdenstone, the city of the deep gnomes, was such a short span in the measure of my years. I remember well Belwar's city and his people, and I always shall.
Theirs was the first society I came to know that was based on the strengths of community, not the paranoia of selfish individualism. Together the deep gnomes survive against the perils of the hostile Underdark, labor in their endless toils of mining the stone, and play games that are hardly distinguishable from every other aspect of their rich lives.
Greater indeed are pleasures that are shared.

- Drizzt Do'Urden”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“here have been many times in my life when I have felt helpless. It is perhaps the most acute pain a person can know, founded in frustration and ventless rage.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Nothin's what it seems, drow!" Bruenor declared. "Nothin'! Ye try to follow what ye know, ye know? But then ye find that ye know not what ye thought ye knowed! Thought a dog'd be tastin' good - looked good enough - but now me belly's cursing me every move!”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Nearly every dark elf in Menzoberranzan dressed in a quiet and practical manner, in robes adorned with the symbols of the Spider Queen or in supple chain-link armour under the folds of a magical and camouflaging piwafwi cloak.

Jarlaxle, arrogant and brash, followed few of the customs of Menzoberranzan inhabitants. He was mostly certainly not the norm of drow society and he flaunted the differences openly, brazenly. He wore not a cloak nor a robe, but a shimmering cape that showed every color of the spectrum both in the glow of light and in the infrared spectrum of heat-sensing eyes. The cape’s magic could only be guessed, but those closest to the mercenary leader indicated that it was very valuable indeed.
Jarlaxle’s vest was sleeveless and cut so high that his slender and tightly muscled stomach was open for all to view. He kept a patch over one eye, though careful observers would understand it as ornamental, for Jarlaxle often shifted it from one eye to the other.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“How many tyrants have tried? How many rulers have sought to reduce their subjects to simple, unthinking instruments of profit and gain? They steal the loves, the religions, of their people; they seek to steal the spirit.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Guenhwyvar padded over to Drizzt’s side and nuzzled its great feline head into the drow’s ribs. “My friend,” Drizzt whispered into the cat’s ear. “Go back now before I lose my courage. Go back to your home and hope that we shall meet again.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“But alone in that tiny cave, Drizzt realized something that distressed him greatly. He couldn’t hide from himself.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Dark elf!” Belwar called as loudly as he dared. “Dark elf, take your panther away. Dark elf!”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Do you understand?” Drizzt whispered to Guenhwyvar one day. Off to the side, Belwar was fast asleep, flat on his back on the stone, using a rock for a pillow. Drizzt shook his head in continued amazement when he studied the little figure. He was beginning to suspect that the deep gnomes carried their affinity with the earth a bit too far. “Go get him,” he prompted the cat Guenhwyvar lumbered over and plopped across the burrow-warden’s legs. Drizzt moved away into the shielding entrance of a tunnel to watch. Only a few minutes later, Belwar awoke with a snarl. “Magga cammara, panther!” the deep gnome growled. “Why must you always bed down on me, instead of beside me?” Guenhwyvar shifted slightly but let out only a deep sigh in response. “Magga cammara, cat!” Belwar roared again. He wiggled his toes frantically, trying futilely to keep the circulation going and dismiss the tingles that had already begun. “Away with you!” The burrow-warden propped himself up on one elbow and swung his hammer-hand at Guenhwyvar’s backside. Guenhwyvar sprang away in feigned flight, quicker than Belwar’s swat. But just as the burrow-warden relaxed, the panther cut back on its tracks, pivoted completely, and leaped”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Dinin nodded. “Ten years ago,” he began, wondering why he was telling all this to Jarlaxle, “I watched as Zaknafein was sacrificed to the Spider Queen. Rarely has any house in all of Menzoberranzan seen a greater waste.” “The weapon master of House Do’Urden had a mighty reputation,” the mercenary put in. “Well earned, do not doubt,” replied Dinin.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Joy multiplies when it is shared among friends, but grief diminishes with every division.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Wszyscy jesteśmy w tym czy innym momencie naszego życia więźniami, względem siebie lub względem wymagań tych, którzy nas otaczają. Jest to brzemię, którego wszyscy doświadczają, którym wszyscy pogardzają i przed którym niewielu nauczyło się uciekać.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“pirit. It cannot be broken and it cannot be stolen away. A victim in the throes of despair might feel otherwise, and certainly the victim’s “master” would like to believe it so. But in truth, the spirit remains, sometimes buried but never fully removed. That is the false assumption of Zin-carla and the danger of such sentient animation. The priestesses, I have come to learn, claim it as the highest gift of the Spider Queen deity who rules the drow. I think not. Better to call Zin-carla Lolth’s greatest lie. The physical powers of the body cannot be separated from the rationale of the mind and the emotions of the heart. They are one and the same, a compilation of a singular being. It is in the harmony of these three—body, mind, and heart—that we find spirit. How many tyrants have tried? How many rulers have sought to reduce their subjects to simple, unthinking instruments of profit and gain? They steal the loves, the religions, of their people; they seek to steal the spirit. Ultimately and inevitably, they fail. This I must believe. If the flame of the spirit’s candle is extinguished, there is only death, and the tyrant finds no gain in a kingdom littered with corpses. But it is a resilient thing, this flame of spirit, indomitable and ever-striving. In some, at least, it will survive, to the tyrant’s demise. Where, then, was Zaknafein, my father, when he set out purposefully to destroy me? Where was I in my years alone in the wilds, when this hunter that I had become blinded my heart and guided my sword hand often against my conscious wishes? We both were there all along, I came to know, buried but never stolen. Spirit. In every language in all the Realms, surface and Underdark, in every time and every place, the word has a ring of strength and determination. It is the hero’s strength, the mother’s resilience, and the poor man’s armor. It cannot be broken, and it cannot be taken away. This I must believe. —Drizzt Do’Urden”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“pirit. It cannot be broken and it cannot be stolen away. A victim in the throes of despair might feel otherwise, and certainly the victim’s “master” would like to believe it so. But in truth, the spirit remains, sometimes buried but never fully removed.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Belwar reached into a deep pocket and took out the light-giving brooch. “Take this, dark elf,” he said softly, flipping it to Drizzt, “and do not forget me.” “Never for a single day in all the centuries of my future,” Drizzt promised. “Never once.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“A strange and dangerously unpredictable race are the humans, and better to be left alone.” “You have met some?” “A few.” Belwar shuddered, as though the memory was not a pleasant one. “Traders from the surface. Ugly things, and arrogant. The whole of the world is only for them, by their thinking.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“I will kill you all!" Cried the unseen wizard.
The next sound from within the tower was a low panther's growl, and then the wizard's voice rang out again,
"I could be wrong!”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Greater indeed are pleasures that are shared. —Drizzt Do’Urden”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“The very identity of every reasoning being is defined by the language, the communication, between that being and others around it.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“Spirit. In every language in all the Realms, surface and Underdark, in every time and every place, the word has a ring of strength and determination. It is the hero’s strength, the mother’s resilience, and the poor man’s armor. It cannot be broken, and it cannot be taken away. This I must believe. —Drizzt Do’Urden”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile

“In my stubborn youth, I believed that I could stand alone, that I was strong enough to conquer my enemies with sword and with principles.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Exile