The Cold Commands Quotes

“I am Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers in the Wake of Warriors," Ringil recited for him, hollowly. "I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves. I am Carry Me and Kill with Me, and Die with Me Where the Road Ends. I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“There are no alternatives. You live with what is. And you don't let your ghosts rent room in your head.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“Well than try giving it some thought, why don’t you? Apply that finely tutored mind of yours to all those bullshit hero-with-a-high-destiny legends you people are so fucking fond of telling one another. You really think, in a mudball slaughterhouse of a world like this, where war and privation harden whole populations to inhuman brutality and ignorance, where the ruling classes dedicate their sons to learning the science of killing men the way they consign their daughters to breeding till they crack--you really think the gods of a world like that have got no better thing to do with their time than take some random piece of lowborn trash and spend long years carving him into shape for a cat’s-paw?”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“Choose your feelings as you would a weapon. This is what it is to be Majak.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“What you feel is not yours. You need not own it. Creatures like these breed the fear in you as we fatten a buffalo calf, and with similar intent.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“Do I look like a fucking slave to you?” he asked them. And though, finally, they would bring him down with sheer weight of numbers, none who heard him ask that question lived to see the dawn.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“Do I look like a fucking slave to you?" he asked them.

And though, finally, they would bring him down with sheer weight of numbers, none who heard him ask that question lived to see the dawn.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“An-Kirilnar is.” The Helmsman stopped dead, so abruptly that it took her a moment to realize there were no more words coming. Flicker of shifting light across the optics, there and gone. But this time she saw it for certain. “Angfal?” “Quests are pretexts, Archeth. They are tales told, narrative blankets to wrap you against the cold you cannot bear.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“And though, finally, they would bring him down with sheer weight of numbers, none who heard him ask that question lived to see the dawn.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“I am Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers in the Wake of Warriors,” Ringil recited for him, hollowly. “I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves. I am Carry Me and Kill with Me, and Die with Me Where the Road Ends. I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“Got a brother served up at the Dhashara pass, he always did say you lot let your women run riot. Mouthing off like they were men, riding horses, carrying weapons, shit like that.”

“Been known to happen,” Egar agreed.

“Yeah, well, that shit won’t wash down here. This is Yhelteth, this is the Empire. We’re civilized. Women know their place. And truth is, I’m about fucking sick of the trouble we get from your kind coming in here.” Grudging, bitten off. “No offense.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“In the end, she said, a little bitterly, facing him in warm perfumed bathwater one evening, despite wealth, despite wisdom, despite contacts and court alliances, I am still a woman. And I will be judged on all counts for that single fact, via the cursed fucking geometry of how pleasing I am to the eye. Cheekbones and arse cheeks are my destiny.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves. I am Carry Me and Kill with Me, and Die with Me Where the Road Ends. I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“That’s right, Dragonbane. And brothers always stood together, the buffalo came when they were called, the grass grew taller and greener, and it never fucking rained. Get a grip, old man.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“Forget uniforms or nominal allegiances—if it wears a weapon and scars, it’s no safer than the next starving wild dog. Feed and water with care, walk like you’re carrying dragon eggs, and never, never get between rival packs.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“The skeins are tangled. Some butterfly shaman up in the north beats his puny fucking wings and the storm gathers before you know it. Chaos gathers, like a bad poet’s verse. We run damage control, but the rules of engagement have changed. You think we’re any happier about it than you? We’ve got our balls to the wall here, hero. We’re fighting half blind, nothing works, not the way it should, not anymore. Which”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“You thought perhaps you would drink it away, the plague? Was that the plan?"

"I thought perhaps I'd try to die drunk."

"Such ambition. And this from a dragon-slayer.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“Strange how you could become a man's god without noticing.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands

“they stand at his back on the cold - he can feel them there now - like new gods. like a fresh pantheon waiting to be born.

It was warm, by the fire.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Cold Commands