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

“Once, we built structures entirely from the most durable substances we knew: granite block, for instance. The results are still around today to admire, but we don’t often emulate them, because quarrying, cutting, transporting, and fitting stone require a patience we no longer possess. No one since the likes of Antoni Gaudí, who began Barcelona’s yet-unfinished Sagrada Familia basilica in 1880, contemplates investing in construction that our great-great-grandchildren’s grandchildren will complete 250 years hence. Nor, absent the availability of a few thousand slaves, is it cheap, especially compared to another Roman innovation: concrete.”
― Alan Weisman, quote from The World Without Us

“People make the mistake of assuming far too many things about armies,’ Lefevre told me one evening. ‘They assume, for a start, that generals know what they are doing and know what is going on. They assume that orders pass down from top to bottom in a smooth and regulated fashion. And above all they assume that wars start only when people decide to start them.’ ‘You are going to tell me that is not the case?’ ‘Wars begin when they are ready, when humanity needs a bloodletting. Kings and politicians and generals have little say in it. You can feel it in the air when one is brewing. There is a tension and nervousness on the face of the least soldier. They can smell it coming in a way politicians cannot. The desire to hurt and destroy spreads over a region and over the troops. And then the generals can only hope to have the vaguest notion of what they are doing.”
― Iain Pears, quote from Stone's Fall

“They started calling it The Rape, and it came to stand for everything: for coming together while falling apart; for loving each other and hating everybody else; for moving at breakneck speed while getting nowhere; for freezing in the streets and melting in the rooms of love.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Angels

“And the nightmare-monster of her childhood revealed itself to be a thing of old clothes stuffed with straw.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from The Oathbound

“What are you?
The voice came from nowhere. It was in the room. It was outside. It was in Magnus's head.
"A warlock," Magnus answered. "And what are you?"
We are many.
"Please do not say you are a legion. Someone's taken that."
Do you make mirth from mundane scriptures, warlock?
"Just breaking the ice”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from The Rise of the Hotel Dumort

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