The White Luck Warrior Quotes

“Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“You can count the bruises on your heart easily enough, but numbering sins is a far tricker matter. Men are eternally forgetting for their benefit. They leave it to the World to remeber, and to the Outside to call them to harsh accout. One hundred Heavens . . . for one thousand Hells.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“We belittle what we cannot bear. We make figments out of fundamentals, all in the name of preserving our own peculiar fancies. The best way to secure one's own deception is to accuse others of deceit.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“It is strange the way trauma deadens curiosity. To suffer cruelty in excess is to be delivered from care. The human heart sets aside its questions when the future is too capricious. This is the irony of tribulation.

To know the world will never be so bad.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“The Men of the Ordeal do not march to save the World, Proyas--at least not first and foremost. They march to save their wives and children. Their tribes and their nations. If they learn that the world, their world, slips into ruin behind them, that their wives and daughters may perish for want of their shields, their swords, the Host of Hosts would melt about the edges, then collapse.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“Master,” Malowebi once asked, “what is the path to truth?” “Ah, little Malo,” old Zabwiri had replied, “the answer is not so difficult as you think. The trick is to learn how to pick out fools. Look for those who think things simple, who abhor uncertainty, and who are incapable of setting aside their summary judgment. And above all, look for those who believe flattering things. They are the true path to wisdom. For the claims they find the most absurd or offensive will be the ones most worthy of your attention.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior: Book Two (Vol. 2)

“You can only believe so many lies before becoming one of them.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“Our words always paint two portraits when we describe our families to others. Outsiders cannot but see the small peeves and follies that wrinkle our relationships with our loved ones. The claims we make in defensive certainty--that we were the one wronged, that we were the one who wanted the best--cannot but fall on skeptical ears since everyone makes the same claimsof virtue and innocence. We are always more than we want to be in the eyes of others simply because we are blind to the bulk of what we are.
. . .
Mimara had wanted him to see her as a victim, as a long-suffering penitent, more captive than daughter, and not as someone embittered and petulant, someone who often held others accountable for her inability to feel safe, to feel anything unpolluted by the perpetual pang of shame . . .
And he loved her the more for it.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“Exhaustion has a way of parting the veils between men, not so much because the effort of censoring their words exceeds them, but because weariness is the foe of volatility. Oft times insults that would pierce the wakeful simply thud against the sleepless and fatigued.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“We must speak plainly. Only honesty provides truth. Only truth delivers triumph.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“Dreams are the darkness that only slumber can illuminate.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“If you find yourself taken unawares by someone you thought you knew, recall that the character revealed is as much your own as otherwise. When it comes to Men and their myriad, mercenary natures, revelation always comes in twos.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior: Book Two (Vol. 2)

“Nothing makes fools of people quite like a luxurious life,” Achamian said, shaking his head and nodding. “Ajencis says they confuse decisions made atop pillows for those compelled by stones. When they hear of other people being deceived, they’re certain they would know better. When they hear of other people being oppressed, they’re certain they would do anything but beg and cringe when the club is raised …” “And so they judge,” Mimara said sourly.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“Gone were the antique rivalries, the mortal hatred that had so often set them against each other. Gone were the differences. And it seemed a thing of mad and tragic folly that Men might raise arms against Men, when creatures so vile so infested the world.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“Truths were carved from the identical wood as were lies—words—and so sank or floated with equal ease.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“Gods are but greater demons," the Cishaurim said, "hungers across the surface of eternity, wanting only to taste the clarity of our souls. Can you not see this?”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“The same lyric, hollered out over and over, like a sacred intonation. It became a banner, a scrap of purity hoisted high above a polluted world, and none would relinquish it. A call and a promise. A curse and a prayer. And the Shining Men matched the Sranc and their preternatural fury, roared singing as they stove skulls and spilled entrails. In one mad voice they fumbled for their faith, raised high the shield of their belief … And became unconquerable.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“This one thing every tyrant will tell you: nothing saves more lives than murder.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior: Book Two (Vol. 2)

“There was an absurdity to places far, a sense of insignificant people scratching meaningless earth. Let them die, she would sometimes think, whenever she heard tidings of famine in Ainon or plague in Nilnamesh. What are these people to me? These places? A fool … that’s what she had been.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior: Book Two (Vol. 2)

“If you find yourself taken unawares by someone you thought you knew, recall that the character revealed is as much your own as otherwise.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“Such is the perversity of pride that it can drive a man to embrace contradiction, so long as some semblance of his privilege is preserved.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

“Zsoronga, Sorweel was beginning to realize, possessed the enviable ability to yoke his conviction to his need—to believe, absolutely, whatever his heart required. For Sorweel, belief and want always seemed like ropes too short to bind together, forcing him to play the knot as a result.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

“Your doom always outruns you. You grow complacent, fat in the company of peace, then awaken to find all safety, all hope, overthrown.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

“what is the path to truth?” “Ah, little Malo,” old Zabwiri had replied, “the answer is not so difficult as you think. The trick is to learn how to pick out fools. Look for those who think things simple, who abhor uncertainty, and who are incapable of setting aside their summary judgment. And above all, look for those who believe flattering things. They are the true path to wisdom. For the claims they find the most absurd or offensive will be the ones most worthy of your attention.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

“Men often find themselves stranded in circumstance, stumbling toward goals not of their making, surrounded by absurdities they can scarce believe. They assume the little continuities that characterize their moments will carry them through their entire lives. They forget the volatility of the whole, the way tribes and nations trip like drunks through history.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

“He glares at her, and for the merest heartbeat, she glimpses hatred. But like so much else, it drops away without residue. Simply another passion too greased with irrelevance to be clutched in the hands of the present.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

“Arrogance is ever the patron of condemnation.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

“All men are born helpless, and most men simply grow into more complicated forms of infancy.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

“He was one of those rare men who always moved in accordance with themselves, as though his soul had been cut and stitched from a single cloth”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior