“War is always an adventure to those who've never seen it.”
“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.”
“Speaking it aloud would reveal the absurdity of it, and he preferred the dream.”
“Men who love themselves hate those who would dim their glory.”
“A fool is any man who doesn’t think he’s a fool.”
“Ignorant people will believe anything if they’re scared enough.”
“A man doesn't know his true strength until he fears for his life”
“Those who have not lived cannot meditate on the mysteries of life.”
“Between lovers, betrayal is always the worst sin.”
“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.”
“Give them the right lie and they’ll believe it.”
“It was a curious effect of pain that time became infinite, every instant of agony prolonged to the ultimate.”
“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.”
“War is blood and shit…There’s no honour in it, Makril’s words.”
“Choice is a lie. The greatest of lies.”
“An hour later it had become obvious that as a swordsman Alucius made a fine poet.”
“What a burden it is to have an intelligent daughter. It goes against nature for wit to be bound up in so much beauty.”
“Sellin shrugged. “Times past, brother. Can’t live in ’em. Just learn from ’em.”
“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…”
“Trust is more important than fear.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It is the lessons we learn that change us from boys to men.”
“For nine more nights they trained, after an arduous day’s march, Vaelin would try to turn a poet into a swordsman.”
“An axe without a blade is just a stick.”
“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.”
“Battle is a hard business, sister. Soft training will make for soft soldiers, who will in turn become soft corpses.”
“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.”
“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.”
“War is never good for commerce. Lest your trading in steel o’course.”
“Leafpaw felt a tingle spread through her fur. She remembered her own conviction, back when she had been little more than a kit, that it was right for her to heal and comfort her Clanmates, and to interpret the signs of StarClan for them. Has Mothwing felt the same? Leafpaw wondered. Could she have felt the same, if she was not Clanborn? Even Yellowfang, the medicine cat before Cinderpelt, had been forestborn, though ThunderClan had not been the Clan of her birth.”
“Once, I discovered the skulls of two impala rams, their horns locked into an irreversible figure-of-eight; the two animals had been trapped in combat, latched to each other during the battle of the rut. The harder they had pulled to escape from each other, the more intractably stuck they were, until they had fallen exhausted, to their knees, in an embrace of hatred that had killed them both. When I picked up the skulls to add to my growing collection of what Vanessa called "Bobo's smelly pile," the hooked horns fell away from each other and the story of the impalas' death struggle was undone.”
“A faint smile that made every tiny hair on her body rise in quivering attention. "How fast can you run?" A wolf's question.”
“Lest soviel ihr könnt! Lest Straßenschilder und Speisekarten, lest die Anschläge im Bürgermeisteramt, lest von mir aus Schundliteratur - aber lest! Lest! Sonst seid ihr verloren!”
“in Cambodia people don’t outright compliment a child. They don’t want to call attention to the child. It is believed that evil spirits easily get jealous when they hear a child being complimented, and they may come and take away the child to the other world.”
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