“Evil is relative…You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“If one chooses sides on emotion then the rebel is the guy to go with. He is fighting for everything men claim to honour, freedom, independance, truth, the right.......all the subjective illusions. All the eternal trigger words. We are minions of the villan of the piece. We confess the illusion and deny the substance.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“Any man who barely sustains an armistice with himself has no business poking around in an alien soul.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“Consider little children. There are not many of them not cute and lovable and precious, sweet as whipped honey and butter. So where do all the wicked people come from?”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“Only a conquerer bothers to honor a fallen foe.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“You who come after me, scribbling these Annals, by now realize that I shy off portraying the whole truth about our band of blackguards. You know they are vicious, violent, and ignorant. They are complete barbarians, living out their cruelest fantasies, their behavior tempered only by the presence of a few decent men. I do not often show that side because these men are my brethren, my family, and I was taught young not to speak ill of kin. The old lessons die hardest.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“I was my usual charming morning self, threatening blood feud with anyone fool enough to disturb my dreams.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“Still, the best augurs are those who divine from the portents of the past. They compile phenomenal records.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“Ah, the smell of mystery and dark doings, of skulduggery and revenge. The meat of a good tale.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“I damned myself for my earlier romanticism. That Croaker who had come north, so thoroughly bemused by the mysterious Lady, was another man. A stripling, filled with the foolish ignorances of youth. Yeah. Sometimes you lie to yourself just to keep going.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“One endured with humble dignity the consequences of youthful folly.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“The price of order,” I muttered. I tried to run the dog off. It wouldn’t budge.
“The cost of chaos,” Tom-Tom countered. Thump on his drum. “Not quite the same thing, Croaker.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“A herd of minuscule lightning bugs poured out of One-Eye's nostrils. Good soldiers all, they fell into formation, spelling out the words Goblin is a Poof.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“Back to the company. Back to business. Back to the parade of years. Back to the annals. Back to fear.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“Nevertheless, four hours after dawn they began dying for their cause.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“Closer at hand, the wheeling gulls were as surly and lackadaisical as the day promised to make most men.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“The Hanged Man stopped gesturing and struck a pose: man listening.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“One-Eye’s handicap in no way impairs his marvelous hindsight. Lightning”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“Okay, Croaker. What the hell happened?”
“I don't know. The falling sickness?”
“Give him some of his own soup,” somebody suggested. “Serve him right.” A tin cup appeared. We forced its contents down his throat.
His eye clicked open. “What are you trying to do? Poison me? Feh! What was that? Boiled sewage?”
“Your soup,” I told him.”
― Glen Cook, quote from The Black Company
“I made friends with three country Marines and a navy medic who provide security for the base—and who, in the course of their duties, confiscated four horses from Iraqi men who came too close to the base with carts, supposedly to collect scrap metal.”
― Kevin Sites, quote from In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars
“Although these firms deploy units that are often much smaller in manpower relative to their client’s adversaries, their effectiveness lies not in their size, but in their comprehensive training, experience, and overall skill at battlefield judgment, all in fundamentally short supply in the chaotic battlefields of the last decade.14 Utilizing coordinated movement and intelligent application of firepower, their strength is their ability to arrive at the right place at the right moment. The fundamental reality of modern warfare is that in many cases such small tactical units can achieve strategic goals.”
― P.W. Singer, quote from Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry
“What’s that smell?” Reynolds asked.
That smell is the stuff they grow mushrooms in.”
DeForrest sniffed the air. “Shit?” he asked.
Captain Suzie shrugged. “Manure.”
― David Wellington, quote from 13 Bullets
“free.” On the edge of town, Fitzgerald saw a sight “that has never left my memory. It was a picture story of the death of one 82nd Airborne trooper. He had occupied a German foxhole and made it his personal Alamo. In a half circle around the hole lay the bodies of nine German soldiers. The body closest to the hole was only three feet away, a potato masher [grenade] in its fist.II The other distorted forms lay where they had fallen, testimony to the ferocity of the fight. His ammunition bandoliers were still on his shoulders, empty of M-1 clips. Cartridge cases littered the ground. His rifle stock was broken in two. He had fought alone and, like many others that night, he had died alone. “I looked at his dog tags. The name read Martin V. Hersh. I wrote the name down in a small prayer book I carried, hoping someday I would meet someone who knew him. I never did.”34”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, quote from D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Battle for the Normandy Beaches
“...the third reason [for being nice to the underdogs in life] being that the wheel of fortune is always spinning, spinning. And just because you're at the top today doesn't mean it'll always be so. When you're at the bottom, you'll want someone to be there for you too.”
― Lauren Baratz-Logsted, quote from Crazy Beautiful
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