Relentless Quotes

“Lolth holds the motivations of an infection, a disease, not a goddess. She does not guide. Rather, she afflicts. She yearns to find that within each of us that is chaos and unleash it, and she will take whatever path she sees most clearly to inflict her glorious catastrophes.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Lolth was within every reasoning being, that dark and selfish side of the mind. A disease, an infection, most often suppressed to a great degree. But not when Lolth got these beings under her thrall. Then the malignancy did grow, and the dark thoughts emerged. Even as he considered that, Kimmurriel better understood why Lolth had tried for the hive mind multiple times-and was probably still trying to infect the illithids now.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Take my dagger and thrust it into my heart,” he asked her. “Draw out my soul itself, send me to oblivion, I beg, for if that is what eternity has planned for me, I would rather be nothingness.” “You think your book written.” “I just read it. It doesn’t end well.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“The arc of reason bends to heaven. The darkness of a few can force hell.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Ah, yes, true that,” Jarlaxle agreed, feigning defeat. “It escaped me that you are without the strong sense of irony to go that delicious route.” Jarlaxle turned to the others. “So we have it, then,” he declared. “It was the illithids, a grand and brilliant plan! Or it was Lolth herself, ever making chaos for her enjoyment. Or it was one of her great rivals, then—perhaps Demogorgon!—blowing up the whole damned Lolthian world on Faerun.” “Or it was nothing at all beyond the epiphany of two women in position to make a difference,” Entreri said dryly. He sighed and shook his head, then looked up at Wulfgar, who stood beside him. “You see, my friend?” he asked with sarcasm exceeding that of the others. “This is why we can’t have good things, good thoughts, simple joy, or hope.” Jarlaxle laughed loudly at that, amused. But there really was a nagging doubt here, about all of it. The most important lesson he had learned in his desperate struggle to survive in Menzoberranzan was that nothing—nothing!—was as it seemed. Not ever. But how he wanted to believe that this time would be different.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“The truth is, you don’t know Menzoberranzan. Not even you, Jarlaxle, who has spent your life trying to figure it out. You cannot understand the hope that brought us to the great cavern those millennia removed. Yes, hope. It was not anger that brought us there, nor fear. It was hope. We fled a world of tyrant queens and insane kings, a place of unending war and injustice. We found a sanctuary, a deep cave, full of Faezress magic—though we did not understand that at the time—and easily defended. A sanctuary, I say, and indeed that is what the word ‘Menzoberranzan’ then meant in the ancient tongue of the drow. “A hundred families,” she continued. “Ten thousand dark elves. And each had a say in their family, and each family had a voice in the Plenum, and the largest families spoke those concerns in the Conclave, which you now—and only—know as the Ruling Council. We were not rulers then as much as servants, heeding the words of all the drow. And it was Lady Lolth that led us there, before she was called the Spider Queen.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Suffered and writhed, shrieked and tumbled, bones snapping, skin splitting-a sight inspiring the very worst memories of those who had been turned into such an abomination. The difference became stark, bloated bodies withering, eight legs becoming two. In short order, nine drow, not nine drider abominations, sat on the meadow, confused”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Suffered and writhed, shrieked and tumbled, bones snapping, skin splitting-a sight inspiring the very worst memories of those who had been turned into such an abomination. The difference became stark, bloated bodies writhing, eight legs becoming two. In short order, nine drow, not nine drider abominations, sat on the meadow, confused”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Regis, who looked as battered as Bruenor had ever seen him, his fine clothes splatted with gore and bits of blood. Beside the halfling stood Jarlaxle, looking very much like he was about to attend a formal court ball, not a mark or a splatter on him. Of course not.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Kimmuriel informed them that to the illithids, Lolth was not a goddess at all. She was a manifestation of malevolence, an infection. Lolth was a bitter bit of a reasoning being promoting pride and envy, greed and power, but nothing more. She was a whispered internal lie coaxing the speaker and listener, one and the same, into a deepening gloom.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Is this illithid hive mind your god, Oblodran?”

Kimmuriel paused and considered that. “It is not all-knowing, but more knowing than most, for what we hide with spoken words we cannot hide within ourselves. A god? No. But it and its illithid limbs comprise a library of truth, where no lie can exist without it being known as a lie.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“You ask us to surrender the poison House Baenre has held for millennia? To give up all that our Matron Mother Yvonne the Eternal spent centuries building?”

“Give it up or have it taken from us, with no chance of future recourse,” Sos’Umptu calmly replied.

Matron Zeerith sucked in her breath audibly, her old lips flapping in a great harrumph. Her own fate was at stake here, surely, as Zhindia Merlarn positively hated her and had long accused her of heresy because of her elevation of men in her family.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“The bellows, the fires, th’embers be flyin’!” Athrogate crooned. “Open the door and ye’re sure to be fryin’!”

“Just…” Jarlaxle sighed and put his face in his hand.

Athrogate roared at his successful rhyme, then rushed past the mercenary.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“There was no sense of gratitude, no thoughts of hope that Kimmuriel would succeed. It just was. There were a few moments like this for Kimmuriel Oblodra, when he almost reconsidered his life’s journey, when he saw so plainly the difference between the sensibilities of the hive mind and those of Jarlaxle. His only friend.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“There were a few moments like this for Kimmuriel Oblodra, when he almost reconsidered his life’s journey, when he saw so plainly the difference between the sensibilities of the hive mind and those of Jarlaxle. His only friend.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Entreri had killed many foes, both in battle and in secret. He had lived as a hired assassin. Always had he justified his work by telling himself that he had never killed anyone who hadn’t deserved it-the world was a brutal place, after all. He still believed that to some extent….except when it came to the work he did with this particular weapon. He hadn’t just killed people with it; he had obligated their souls and stolen whatever afterlife might have awaited them. How many victims deserved that?”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“We do not know Lolth’s feelings for Drizzt Do’Urden,” Eskavine said. “Ever has she been coy about that particularly minor player in her grand game.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“For Drizzt had done what Zak had always wanted to do. Drizzt had seen the corruption, the evilness, the ugly weight of Lothian edicts, and Drizzt had rejected it more fully than Zaknsfein had ever found the courage to do, more fully than Jarlaxle had ever found the courage to do.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“They speak a lie and even though we don’t believe them, they speak a line of hate-against the elves above or the deep gnomes or another drow house- and even though we don’t agree with them, we don’t speak out,” Zak said.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Perhaps there is no deeper cause, or greater force behind this change, or revelation, or whatever else you might consider it,” Artemis Entreri offered. “Maybe it just happened.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“The darkness is deepened one lie, one act, at a time,” Kimmuriel agreed.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Because I know the truth,” Kimmuriel explained. “And when the goddess is not a goddess at all, that truth is freedom and that truth is power. She is an infection.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Truth is the best antidote—especially for those who had lived in the dark for so long.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Are ye more trapped by the way the world sees ye or by the way ye see the world seein’ ye?”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Good,” said Jarlaxle, as if that answered that. “I’ll return presently, and if not . . . well, run.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“I know a lot about everything,” Jarlaxle replied. “That’s how I stay alive.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“I do what needs to be done,” Zaknafein retorted. “And I do it well.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“The crumbling world will not wait for heroes who pause.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“Come,” he told Penelope, “let us be quick. The crumbling world will not wait for heroes who pause.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless

“You are your own judge,” Yvonnel explained, “in places within your heart, soul, and memory where you cannot hide. You know this. Above all others, in those dark and private places, you know what you deserve.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Relentless