Quotes from Blood Song

“War is always an adventure to those who've never seen it.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Knowledge is what shapes us, little brothers,” he told them, for once his smile was absent, his tone entirely serious. “It makes us who we are. What we know informs everything we do and every decision we make.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Speaking it aloud would reveal the absurdity of it, and he preferred the dream.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Men who love themselves hate those who would dim their glory.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“A fool is any man who doesn’t think he’s a fool.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Ignorant people will believe anything if they’re scared enough.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“A man doesn't know his true strength until he fears for his life”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Those who have not lived cannot meditate on the mysteries of life.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Between lovers, betrayal is always the worst sin.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“When he visited the stables he found Spit also had a welcome waiting. It lasted a full two minutes and Master Rensial stated confidently it was the longest fart he had ever heard a horse produce.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Give them the right lie and they’ll believe it.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“It was a curious effect of pain that time became infinite, every instant of agony prolonged to the ultimate.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Vaelin knew himself to be the best swordsman among them. Dentos was master of the bow, Barkus unarmed combat, Nortah the finest rider and Caenis knew the wild like a wolf, but the sword was his.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“War is blood and shit…There’s no honour in it, Makril’s words.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Choice is a lie. The greatest of lies.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“An hour later it had become obvious that as a swordsman Alucius made a fine poet.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“What a burden it is to have an intelligent daughter. It goes against nature for wit to be bound up in so much beauty.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Sellin shrugged. “Times past, brother. Can’t live in ’em. Just learn from ’em.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“A warrior’s song is a lonely tune Full of fire and gone too soon Warriors sing of fallen friends Lost battles and bloody ends…”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Trust is more important than fear.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“I knew a man once,” Al Sorna continued, “who loved a woman very much. But he had a duty to perform, a duty he knew would cost him his life, and hers too if she stayed with him. And so he tricked her and had her taken far away. Sometimes that man tries to cast his thoughts across the ocean, to see if the love they shared has turned to hate, but he finds only distant echoes of her fierce compassion, a life saved here, a kindness done there, like smoke trailing after a blazing torch. And so he wonders, does she hate me? For she has much to forgive, and between lovers,” his gaze switched from her to me, “betrayal is always the worst sin.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Time is as much a delusion as your faith, brother. To look into the void is to see the vastness and smallness of everything at once, in an instant of terror and wonder.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“It is the lessons we learn that change us from boys to men.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“For nine more nights they trained, after an arduous day’s march, Vaelin would try to turn a poet into a swordsman.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“An axe without a blade is just a stick.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“I’ll fight but I won’t murder. His boyhood resolve coming back to him, the promise he had made to himself after saving them in the wild. I’ll kill men who face me in battle but I won’t take the sword to innocents. It felt so hollow now, so naïve.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Battle is a hard business, sister. Soft training will make for soft soldiers, who will in turn become soft corpses.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“is just a word. You can’t eat it or drink it and yet everywhere I go men talk of it endlessly, and they all tell a different tale of what it actually means. For the Alpirans it’s all about duty, the Renfaelins think it’s the same as courage. In these islands it appears it means killing a son for a crime committed by his father then slaughtering a helpless man when the pantomime fails to go to plan.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“There,” he said, pointing. “We’ll camp on the westward slope. No fires, and it would be greatly appreciated, Baron, if your men refrained from excessive noise.” “I’ll do what I can, my lord. But they’re not peasants, y’know. Can’t just flog them like your lot.” “Maybe you should, milord,” Dentos suggested. “Remind ‘em they bleed the same colour as us peasants.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“War is never good for commerce. Lest your trading in steel o’course.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

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Popular quotes

“We do not know, we do not know. We shall live from day to day, and put more locks on the doors, and get a fine fierce dog when the fine fierce bitch next door has pups, and hold on to our handbags more tenaciously; and the beauty of the trees by night, and the raptures of lovers under the stars, these things we shall forego. We shall forego the coming home drunken through the midnight streets, and the evening walk over the star-lit veld. We shall be careful, and knock this off our lives, and knock that off our lives, and hedge ourselves about with safety and precaution. And our lives will shrink, but they shall be the lives of superior beings; and we shall live with fear, but at least it will not be a fear of the unknown. And the conscience shall be thrust down; the light of life shall not be extinguished, but be put under a bushel, to be preserved for a generation that will live by it again, in some day not yet come; and how it will come, and when it will come, we shall not think about at all.”
― Alan Paton, quote from Cry, the Beloved Country

“When I cry - when I let myself cry - that's who I cry for. I don't cry for myself. I cry for the Cassie that's gone.
And I wonder what that Cassie would think of me.
The Cassie who kills.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The 5th Wave

“He turns off the techno-shit in his goggles. All it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it's happening to him. Very post-modern.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Snow Crash

“You saw a ghost, didn't you?" he said.
To my relief, I managed to laugh. "Hate to break it to you, but
there's no such thing as ghosts."
Huh."
His gaze traveled around the laundry room, like a cop searching
for an escaped convict. When he turned that
piercing look on me, its intensity sucked the backbone out of me.
What do you see, Chloe?"
I -I-I don't s-s-s-"
Slow down." He snapped the words, impatient. "What do they
look like? Do they talk to you?"
You really want to know?"
Yeah."
I chewed my lip, then lifted onto my tiptoes. He bent to listen.
They wear white sheets with big eye holes. And they say 'Boo!'" I
glowered up at him. "Now get out of my
way."
I expected him tosneer. Cross his arms and say, Make me, little girl.His lips twitched and I steeled myself, then I realized he was smiling.Laughing at me.
He stepped aside. I swept past him to the stairs.”
― Kelley Armstrong, quote from The Summoning

“I don't know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them.”
― Max Brooks, quote from World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

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