The bully's greatest terror,' Bugg said, 'comes when he meets someone bigger and meaner--.

Ah, Fist, it's the curse of history that those who should read them, never do.

Not even the lichen of the tundra is at peace. All is struggle, all is war for dominance. Those who lose, vanish. -And we're no different you're saying- We are, soldier. We possess the privilege of choice. The gift of foresight. Though often we come too late in acknowledging responsibilities.

Lying with lovers also belonged to night, and that made sense, for it was in the midst of true darkness that the first fire of life was born, flickering awake to drive back the unchanging absence of light. To lie with a lover was to celebrate the creation of fire. From this in the flesh to the world beyond.

Or, rather, you irritate everyone, Curdle. Because you're so unreliable.'
'I'm not always unreliable, Telorast.

Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?

Power is violence, its promise, its deed. Power cares nothing for reason, nothing for justice, nothing for compassion. It is, in fact, the singular abnegation of these things -- once the cloak of deceits is stripped away, this one truth is revealed.

He was a man who would never ask for sympathy. He was a man who sought only to do what was right. Such people appear in the world, every world, now and then, like a single refrain of some blessed song, a fragment caught on the spur of an otherwise raging cacophony. Imagine a world without such souls. Yes, it should have been harder to do.

Humanity's crisis is, it seems, its inability to appreciate gifts freely given.

Morality was not relative, they claimed, nor even existing solely in the realm of human condition. No, they proclaimed morality was an imperative of all life, a natural law that was neither the brutal acts of beasts nor the lofty ambitions of humanity, but something other, something unassailable.

With the Black Company series Glen Cook single-handedly changed the face of fantasy--something a lot of people didn't notice and maybe still don't. He brought the story down to a human level, dispensing with the cliché archetypes of princes, kings, and evil sorcerers. Reading his stuff was like reading Vietnam War fiction on peyote.

People of civilized countenance made much of exposing the soft underbellies of their psyche -- effete and sensitive were the brands of finer breeding. It was easy for them, safe, and that was the whole point, after all: a statement of coddled opulence that burned the throats of the poor more than any ostentatious show of wealth.

Money's just an idea, it has power. Only it's not real power. Just the promise of power. But that promise is enough so long as everyone keeps pretending it's real. Stop pretending and it all falls apart.

War has its necessities...and I have always understood that. Always known the cost. But, this day, by my own hand, I have realized something else. War is not a natural state. It is an imposition, and a damned unhealthy one. With its rules, we willingly yield our humanity. Speak not of just causes, worthy goals. We are takers of life.

Keep repeating the exercise of grief and it loses meaning, it becomes rote, false, a game of self-delusion, self-indulgence. A way of never getting over anything, ever.

Gods, I wish the world was full of passive women.He thougt for a moment longer, then scowled. On second thoughts, what a nightmare that'd be. It's the job of a man to fan the spark into flames, not quench it.

Spilled blood is lost blood, powerless blood in the end. It dies when abandoned. Witness violent death for proof of that.

For the true face of Death is dissolution, and in dissolution there is chaos until the last mote of energy ceases its willful glow, its persistent abnegation.

Captain! You can't hold them off! I tried! I swear! They've been artificially enhanced, sir! But all the humans died out -- there's bones out there by the millions! They were all suffocated by cuteness! The World is full of kiitens, oh the horror!
'My God,' Hadrian said. They've finally did it! All those oh-so-cute-my-cuddy-kittens-here's-a-pic bastards! They finally went and did it!

Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.

Brooding's different,' he muttered to the empty chair across from him. 'Could be any subject, for one thing. A subject not at all cynical. Like the meddling of the gods -- no, all right, not like that one. Smithing, yes. Horseshoes. Nothing cynical about horseshoes ... I don't think. Sure. Keeping horses comfortable. So they can gallop into battle and die horribly.' He fell silent. Scowling.