“Someday, Locke Lamora,” he said, “someday, you’re going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so overwhelmingly that the sky will light up and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comets with glee. And I just hope I’m still around to see it.”
“Oh please,” said Locke. “It’ll never happen.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“There’s no freedom quite like the freedom of being constantly underestimated.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“I cut off his fingers to get him to talk, and when he'd confessed everything I wanted to hear, I had his fucking tongue cut out, and the stump cauterized."
Everyone in the room stared at him.
"I called him an asshole, too," said Locke. "He didn't like that.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“I only steal because my dear old family needs the money to live!"
Locke Lamora made this proclamation with his wine glass held high; he and the other Gentleman Bastards were seated at the old witchwood table. . . . The others began to jeer.
"Liar!" they chorused
"I only steal because this wicked world won't let me work an honest trade!" Calo cried, hoisting his own glass.
"LIAR!"
"I only steal," said Jean, "because I've temporarily fallen in with bad company."
"LIAR!"
At last the ritual came to Bug; the boy raised his glass a bit shakily and yelled, "I only steal because it's heaps of fucking fun!"
"BASTARD!”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“There are only three people in life you can never fool--pawnbrokers, whores, and your mother. Since your mother's dead, I've taken her place. Hence, I'm bullshit-proof.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“I don't have to beat you. I don't have to beat you, motherfucker. I just have to keep you here... until Jean shows up.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“When you don't know everything that you could know, it's a fine time to shut your fucking noisemaker and be polite.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“I can't wait to have words with the Gray King when this shit is all finished," Locke whispered. "There's a few things I want to ask him. Philosophical questions. Like, 'How does it feel to be dangled out a window by a rope tied around your balls, motherfucker?”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“I've got kids that enjoy stealing. I've got kids that don't think about stealing one way or the other, and I've got kids that just tolerate stealing because they know they've got nothing else to do. But nobody--and I mean nobody--has ever been hungry for it like this boy. If he had a bloody gash across his throat and a physiker was trying to sew it up, Lamora would steal the needle and thread and die laughing. He...steals too much.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“You can't help being young, but it's past time that you stopped being stupid.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“We’re a different sort of thief here, Lamora. Deception and misdirection are our tools. We don’t believe in hard work when a false face and a good line of bullshit can do so much more.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“To us — richer and cleverer than everyone else!”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“If reassurances could dull pain, nobody would ever go to the trouble of pressing grapes.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“Throwing blondes at Locke Lamora was not unlike throwing lettuce at sharks.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“Locke sighed.
'So this is winning,' he said.
'It is,' replied Jean.
'It can go fuck itself,' said Locke.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“Just one question, you arrogant fucking cocksucker" said Locke. "I'll grant the Lamora part is easy to spot; the truth is, I didn't know about the apt translation when I took the name. I borrowed it from this old sausage dealer who was kind to me once, back in Catchfire before the plague. I just liked the way it sounded.
"But what the fuck" he said slowly, "ever gave you the idea that Locke was the first name I was actually born with?”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“So that makes us robbers of robbers," said Bug, "who pretend to be robbers working for a robber of other robbers.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“You simply collapsed, sir. In layman's terms, your body revoked its permission for you to continue heaping abuse upon it.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“What kind of knife is this?” Locke held a rounded buttering utensil up for Chains’ inspection. “It’s all wrong. You couldn’t kill anyone with this.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“My name's Jean Tannen, and I'm the ambush.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“You're one third bad intentions, one third pure avarice, and one eighth sawdust. What's left, I'll credit, must be brains.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“I’m only doing this,” he said, “because I really love hiding in haunted Eldren buildings on dark and creepy nights.”
“You’re a liar,” said Jean, slowly. “I’m only doing this because I’ve always wanted to see Bug get eaten by an Eldren ghost.”
“Liar,” said Calo. “I’m only doing this because I fucking love hauling half a ton of bloody coins up out of a vault and packing them away on a cart.”
“Liar!” Galdo chuckled. “I’m only doing this because while you’re all busy elsewhere, I’m going to go pawn all the furniture in the burrow at No-Hope Harza’s.”
“You’re all liars,” said Locke as their eyes turned expectantly to him.
“We’re only doing this because nobody else in Camorr is good enough to pull this off, and nobody else is dumb enough to get stuck doing it in the first place.”
“Bastard!” They shouted in unison, forgetting their surroundings for a bare moment.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“You've got that motherly concern in your eyes, Jean. I must look like I'm hammered as shit," said Locke.
"Actually you look like you were executed last week.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“It was strange, how readily authority could be conjured with nothing but a bit of strutting jackassery.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“Those prancing little pants-wetters come here to learn the colorful and gentlemanly art of fencing, with its many sporting limitations and its proscriptions against dishonorable engagements. You on the other hand, you are going to learn how to kill men with a sword.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“Advice," Doña Vorchenza chuckled. "Advice. The years play a sort of alchemical trick, transmuting one's mutterings to a state of respectability. Give advice at forty and you're a nag. Give it at seventy and you're a sage.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“When you see the Crooked Warden," said Locke, twisting something in his hands, "tell him that Lock Lamora learns slowly, but he learns well. And when you see my friends, you tell them that there are more of you on the way.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
“Gods, I love this place," Locke said, drumming his fingers against his thighs. "Sometimes I think this whole city was put here simply because the gods must adore crime. Pickpockets rob the common folk, merchants rob anyone they can dupe, Capa Barsavi robs the robbers and the common folk, the lesser nobles rob nearly everyone, and Duke Nicovante occasionally runs off with his army and robs the shit out of Tal Verarr or Jerem, not to mention what he does to his own nobles and his common folk.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora
Scott Lynch
Born place: in Saint Paul, The United States
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“Ocean: The endless part of yourself you never knew but always suspected was there.
-Madeline (Madeline's Dictionary)”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything
“There were two sets of encyclopedias that had sections on rats. From them we learned that we were about the most hated animals on earth, except maybe snakes and germs.
That seemed strange to us, and unjust. [...] But people think we spread diseases, and I suppose possibly we do, though never intentionally, and surely we never spread as many diseases as people themselves do.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, quote from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
“There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.”
― John le Carré, quote from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
“On the other hand, those who are willing to wait for an extra season other two for full results (against an Japanese beetle) will turn to milky disease; they will be rewarded with lasting control that become more, rather than less effective with the passage of time.”
― Rachel Carson, quote from Silent Spring
“There is one moment, a moment in eternity. Before we find out the truth about one another. That simple moment is the one that propels us through life—what we felt like at the very edge of our future, standing over the abyss, before we knew for sure we loved. Before we knew for sure we loved forever. Before the dying Dasha, the dying Mama, the dying Leningrad. Before Luga. Before the divinity of Lazarevo, when the miracles you heaped upon me with your love and your body alloyed us for life. Before all that, you and I walked through the Summer Garden, and once in a while my bare arm touched your arm, and once in a while you spoke and that gave me an excuse to look up into your face, into your laughing eyes, to catch a glimpse of your mouth and I, who had never been touched, tried to imagine what it might be like to have your mouth touch me. Falling in love with you in the Summer Garden in the white nights of Leningrad is the moment that propels me through life.”
― Paullina Simons, quote from Tatiana and Alexander
Promises
Alta
I Can See You
How to Be Good
The Path to Power
Interred with Their...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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