The Trouble with Peace

Winning teaches you nothing,” said Tunny. “You see what a man really is when he loses.

Tomorrow came, and it was much like yesterday. Just more so.

life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

Everyone should forgive themselves, Vick.” He gave her wrist another squeeze then let her go, looking out towards the lake again. “After all… no one else will.

We’re all like children, Rikke. The older you get, the more you realise the grown-ups won’t suddenly walk in and set things right. You want things right, you have to put ’em right yourself.

Enemies are like furniture, aren't they? Better chosen for oneself than inherited.

But then it’s difficult, isn’t it, to make a passionate argument for what you already have? So boring. Whereas the delightful alternative? A bouquet of promises! A sackful of dreams! A glorious ship of fantasies, undamaged by collision with actually getting anything done.

Hoping for a thing often seems the best way o’ bringing on the opposite

I find reputations rarely fit people all that well. What are they, after all, but costumes we put on to disguise ourselves?

You would’ve thought the more pain you suffered, the more you’d get used to it, but it was the other way around.

A man is measured by his enemies. Worthy ones can be more missed than friends.

You can’t change the fact the world’s full of arseholes. You can only change how you deal with them.

Your Majesty, we are not here to set right all the world’s wrongs.” Orso stared back at him. “What are we here for, then?” Bayaz neither smiled nor frowned. “To ensure that we benefit from them.

Years, back, when they first made him a sergeant, he’d imagined the officers much have all the answers. When he was given his commission, he’d imagined the generals must have all the answers. When King Orso made him a general, he’d imagined the Closed counsel bust have all the answers. Now, as a lord marshal, he finally knew it for an absolute fact. No one had the answers. Worse. There weren’t any.

A bank with a reputation for mercy is like a whore with a reputation for chastity – one fears they won’t get the job done.

Who says there even is a real Shenkt? People like things that are simple. Black and white. Good and evil. They want to make a choice and tell themselves they were right. But as His Eminence is fond of saying, the real world is painted in greys. The truth is complicated, full of mixed emotions and blurred outcomes and each-way bets. The truth … is a hard sell.

I won’t. But … pamphlets?’ ‘Absolutely.’ ‘Etchings?’ ‘The language of the heart.’ ‘Do you really think people are that stupid?’ ‘Darling.’ She leaned closer, and kissed him gently, and touched him lightly on the tip of his nose with her fingertip. ‘People are far more stupid than that.

You are a king. You have no business talking about the right thing.

The dead save me from the fucking young.’ ‘No getting away from ’em, sadly,’ muttered Clover. ‘The older you get, the more of ’em there are.

have often said that life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

The ones you like straight away rarely turn out to be your favourites.

Prefer to eat the eggs I’ve got, my king, rather’n the ones still up in the tree.

Nothing is ever fixed. From the moment it is born, from the moment it is built, everything is always dying, decaying, drifting into chaos.

Along with the constant pain was the constant need to pretend you weren’t in pain at all, as though the worst thing about your agony was that it might put other people out.

So this is all about appeareances?` murmured Vick. 'Being king IS all about appeareances,' said Orso. 'An endless perfomance with no chance for an encore and for damn sure no applause.

I miss you,” said Rikke. Said it to both of them. But she wasn’t sure whether she missed them, or she missed who she’d been when she was with them.

A battle is no place for a self-respecting warrior, but if you must attend one at least have the good taste to be where the fighting isn't.

Help with strange problems comes from strange people.

Maybe’s a game with no winners.