“Resist faith. Resist trust. Believe only in what you touch with your hands. The rest is error and air.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Assume nothing,’” he said. The first chapter of the Tactics. “If we figure everyone might be a murderer, we’re less likely to be disappointed.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Men tend to die when you slide steel beneath their skin and wiggle it around. Even priests.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“You squint hard enough, and everything starts to look suspicious.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Any fool can see what's there. You need to see what is not there.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“There’s no blade as keen as surprise.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“we use the time we have. There is no other.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Believe what you see with your eyes; trust what you hear with your ears; know what you feel with your flesh. The rest is dream and delusion.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“The man still fighting last week’s battle will always lose to the man already fighting tomorrow’s,”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“The mind was a clay pot set out in the rain. A monk could empty it daily and still the old hopes and worries, the body’s meager strengths and perennial pains pattered against the bottom, trickled down the sides, filling it once more.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Easier to recall a loosed falcon than a spoken word.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“When you know nothing about a creature," the monk ground out, his voice as hard as a rock slide, "expect it has come to kill you.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“The fighters who frighten you are not the fighters to fear. The man you barely notice will be the one to bury a blade in your back.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“If you hope to play a part in this empire, Sanlitun had told her time and time again, you must learn to divorce your feelings from your face. The world sees what you allow it to see, judges you according to what you reveal.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Henderson Jakes, the founder of the Eyrie, had envisioned a cadre of elite soldiers dedicated to celibacy, the empire, and the art of war. He had to settle for two out of three. Young men and women willing to leap off massive birds into burning buildings at a mere nod from a commanding officer grew violently rebellious when required to abstain from sex.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“The present is the present. Tomorrow will still be ‘now.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Leadership isn't just about giving orders. A fool can give orders. A leader listens. He changes his mind. He acknowledges mistakes.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Obedience is a knife that cuts the cord of bondage.
Silence is a hammer that shatters the walls of speech.
Stillness is strength; pain a soft bed.
Put down your basin; emptiness is the only vessel.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Triste lay in a heap, her dress hitched up around her thighs, whimpering and shuddering until Gwenna shifted to kick her ungently in the head.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“The process is the goal,” Kaden responded innocently, trying not to feel smug. It was about time one of those Shin maxims worked in his favor.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“What I observe is that the world is ruled by men—good men and bad, desperate men and those with principles.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“I’d leave you here longer, but it’s no longer safe.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Emptiness exists only when something else has been gouged away.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“I’m doubly sorry for your loss,” the old monk began after a time. “First, because every son should have a chance to know his father, not as a child knows his protector, but as a man knows another man.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“every son should have a chance to know his father, not as a child knows his protector, but as a man knows another man.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“The ablest swordsman, Hendran wrote, the consummate tactician, the peerless general: All seem invulnerable until luck turns against them. Make no mistake—place a man in death’s way enough times, and his luck will turn.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“dozens of groups of seven to sit on the dozens of trials that would take place, each group composed, as decreed by Terial himself, of the Seven: a mother, a merchant, a pauper, a prelate, a soldier, a son, and a dying man.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Believe what you see with your eyes, trust what you hear with your ears; know what you feel with your flesh. The rest is dream and delusion.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
“Our lives were short, no more than a blink to the foes we fought, but we were fertile. Fathers fought our battles, but it was our mothers who won the war.”
― Brian Staveley, quote from The Emperor's Blades
Brian Staveley
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“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud...”
― Yann Martel, quote from Life of Pi
“There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Tale of Two Cities
“When will people learn that just because you can make something doesn’t mean you should?”
― Sara Gruen, quote from Water for Elephants
“I've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you're gold when you're a kid, like green. When you're a kid everything's new, dawn. It's just when you get used to everything that it's day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That's gold. Keep that way, it's a good way to be.”
― S.E. Hinton, quote from The Outsiders
“There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”
― Homer, quote from The Odyssey
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