The Providence of Fire Quotes

“There’s no shame, the Kettral said, in crying in your own rack. The rest of the equation remained unspoken, axiomatic: you could cry all you wanted in your rack, provided you got up again in a day or two, provided that when you got up, you went back out, and that when you went back out, you were the baddest, fastest, most brutal motherfucker”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“People kill to get power, they kill to keep power, and they kill if they think they might lose it, which is pretty much always. Even if you and I both stay out of it, even if we both die, whoever came after us will keep coming. They’ll find the next threat, the next worrisome voice, the next person with the wrong name or the wrong skin. Maybe they’ll go after the rich for their coin or the peasants for their rice, the Bascans because they’re too dark or the Breatans because they’re too pale—it doesn’t matter.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“It’s built into the job. Bakers have flour, fishermen have nets, and leaders have lies.” Adare”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“I'm losing the game, which means I have three choices: cede, fight back..." ...Kaden smiled, "Or break the board.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“Often there is no good path. That does not mean we should not walk.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“Oh for ’Shael’s sweet sake, girl, you think you can rule an empire without lying? You think your father didn’t lie? Or his father? Or any of your goldy-eyed great-great-founders of Annur? It’s built into the job. Bakers have flour, fishermen have nets, and leaders have lies.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“This is what we are for, Alin,” the older guardsman said, turning to his companion. Adare had never heard anyone use Birch’s first name. She hadn’t even known it herself. “Our lives for hers. If she refuses this, there’s no saying what the zealots will do to her.”

“There’s no saying what the zealots will do if she agrees,” Birch pointed out. “We can’t save her if we’re dead.”

“That is a risk that the princess will have to assess for herself. Our duty is to serve.”

“I thought service meant fighting,” Birch protested, but the anger had gone out of him. Resignation thinned his voice.

“Sometimes, Alin,” Fulton replied, nodding. “And sometimes it means dying.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“It’s done, he growled at himself after a while. You fucked up somewhere. The question is what you do now.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“a litany, the power of which he had long ago forgotten, a desperate string of syllables stronger than any prayer, the ancient, ineluctable chant of humanity itself: I want … I want … I want …”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“Bakers have flour, fishermen have nets, and leaders have lies.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“There was something about being safe again, about being finally and undeniably alive after living so close to death, that made soldiers, good soldiers, soldiers who held it together for days or weeks under the most brutal circumstances, dance like madmen, collapse sobbing, or drink themselves nearly to oblivion”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“The less you talk,” Lehav said, “the easier it will be for everyone.” “I owe them…” “What?” He raised an eyebrow. “An explanation?” “Yes.” “You can explain a lot of things to a man. His own death is not one of them.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“The deader a man gets, the more honest he becomes. Lies are a vice of the living.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“Mistakes were errors of ignorance or neglect, ineptitude or poor planning. Mistakes were miscalculations or errors in judgment.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“The future is a dream. There is only now.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“She had had convictions once, beliefs about justice and honor, right and wrong, but the slow turning of the world, like a mill wheel over grain, had ground them down to flour so fine that it slipped softly and silently between her fingers.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“You can explain a lot of things to a man. His own death is not one of them.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“Better to be cold and ready than warm and dead,”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“If surprise doesn’t work in four heartbeats, it’s not surprise anymore.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“among a soft folk obsessed with words, choosing the right word is nearly as important as doing the right thing.” The”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“Savage. Like a horse with blinders, you see only what your language allows you to see. This is the danger of relying too heavily on words.”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“It was obvious he had already lost, and the protestations, for all their difference, were all the same: a litany, the power of which he had long ago forgotten, a desperate string of syllables stronger than any prayer, the ancient, ineluctable chant of humanity itself: I want … I want … I want …”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“a litany, the power of which he had long ago forgotten, a desperate string of syllables stronger than any prayer, the ancient, ineluctable chant of humanity itself: I want . . . I want . . . I want . . .”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire

“Blinding light. Perfect black. Ringing like a million mouths, screaming, singing. Body instantly and utterly gone. Gone the rain. Gone the mob. Gone her own mind and will. Gone everything but a single voice,”
― Brian Staveley, The Providence of Fire