Edgedancer

The world ends tomorrow, but the day after that, people are going to ask what’s for breakfast.

It is strange,” the man said. “People get such a small amount of time. So many I’ve known say it—as soon as you feel you’re getting a handle on things, the day is done, the night falls, and the light goes out.

What good is seeking a greater law, when that law can be the whims of a man either stupid or ruthless?

I want control,” she said, opening her eyes. “Not like a king or anything. I just want to be able to control it, a little. My life. I don’t want to get shoved around, by people or by fate or whatever. I just ... I want it to be me who chooses.

You couldn’t live your life getting up and seeing the same things every day. You had to keep moving, otherwise people started to know who you were, and then they started to expect things from you. It was one step from there to being gobbled up.

Course, that didn’t mean luck didn’t exist. You either believed in that, or you believed in what those Vorin priests were always saying—that poor people was chosen to be poor, on account of them being too dumb to ask the Almighty to make them born with heaps of spheres.

It’s worse when they think they’re your friend. Gawx, the viziers. They make assumptions. They think they know you, then start to expect things of you. Then you have to be the person everyone thinks you are, not the person you actually are.

as soon as you feel you’re getting a handle on things, the day is done, the night falls, and the light goes out.

Pity can be a powerful tool. Anytime you can make someone else feel something, you’ve got power over them.

The woman looked up at Lift. “He’s right about that, um…” “Say it,” Lift said. “Your Pancakefulness.” “Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?

He wasn’t so frightening, for a Voidbringer. He must have been like … the Voidbringer all the other ones made fun of for wearing silly hats. The one that would correct all the others, and explain which fork they had to use when they sat down to consume human souls.

All right. Maybe I can get you one soul. Perhaps a tax collector...'cept they ain't human. Would they work? Or would you need, like, three of them to make up one normal person's soul? -Lift

She’d built her life around not having to wait for anyone or anything.

Being young was an excuse. A plausible justification

What if everybody is frightened, and nobody has the answers?

You're my pet Voidbringer, and no lies are going to change that. I got you captured. No stealing souls, now. We ain't here for souls. Just a little thievery, the type what never hurt nobody.