David Eddings Quotes

I'm pretty good at that. There were a lot of things I did when I was just a boy that I didn't tell her about. I didn't come right out and lie to her, of course. A boy should never lie to his mother, but now and then things sort of slipped my mind. You know how that can happen."
"Oh, yes." Althalus laughed. "Things have been slipping my mind for as long as I can remember.

Well . . ." Andine looked helplessly at the cat in her lap. "She's so adorable," the girl said, catching Emmy up in her arms and snuggling her face up to the furry captor of her heart.
"You noticed," Althalus said drily. "Don't try to fight her, because she always wins. Just give her all your love and do as she tells you to do. You might as well, because she'll cheat to get what she wants if she has to.

A really good thief shouldn’t have to kill people.

“That information is not supposed to be in the hands of the general population. Ordinary people aren’t equipped to deal with it.”
“Ordinary people are probably much wiser than you think they are, Reverend [...] Every family has a few black sheep. There’s nothing really unusual about it.

Religion’s based on a desire to know what’s going to happen in the future. Astrologers believe that the stars control that.

"... Can you pretend to be stupid?”
Eliar made a rueful kind of face. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’m a country boy from the highlands of Arum. We invented stupid.”

“What did you do to Andine to bring her around? She didn’t really want to sell Eliar to me.”
I persuaded her to love me more than she hated him.
“I thought you couldn’t do that sort of thing out here.” I didn’t create her love, pet. All I did was encourage it. Andine’s very young and very passionate. She loves—and hates—with her blood and bones, and she loves even more intensely than she hates. All I had to do to unleash her love was to be adorable. I’m an expert at that, if you’ll recall.
“I still think you’re cheating, Em.”
No, not really. Andine’s very pretty, and she smells nice. She’s soft and warm, and that voice of hers throbs like a bell. She’s very easy to love, and she responds to love with love of her own. I didn’t cheat her, Althalus. I did love her—and I still do.
“I thought you were supposed to love only me.”
What a ridiculous idea. Just because I love her, it doesn’t mean that I love you less. My love is boundless, you know.

“I’d pay a premium for this one, your Highness.”
“That one isn’t for sale[.]”
“Everything’s for sale, your Highness,” Althalus replied with a cynical laugh.

You're a slave trader, then?"
Althalus shrugged deprecatingly. "It's a living, your Highness. Slaves are a valuable commodity. I buy them in places where they're an inconvenience and take them to places where they can be put to work to pay for their keep. Everybody benefits, really. The one who sells them to me gets gold, and the one who buys them gets laborers."
"What do the slaves get?"
"They get fed, your Highness. A slave doesn't have to worry about where his next meal's coming from. He gets fed even when the crops fail or the fish aren't biting."
"Our philosophers tell us that slavery's an evil."
"I don't concern myself with philosophy, your Highness. I take the world as I find it. I'm prepared to offer ten Perquaine gold wheats for every able-bodied young captive you'd care to sell.

Sick, isn't it?" Dhakan replied. "Our glorious, but slightly warped, leader hasn't let him out of her sight since the day he was captured.

‘Labor contractor’ sounds so much nicer than ‘slave trader,’ wouldn’t you say?

“I’m stinking rich, Em,” he said exuberantly.
I’ve been noticing that for several days now. You’re long overdue for a bath.
“That’s not what I meant, little kitten.”
It should have been. You’re strong enough to curdle milk.

“Dear God!” Althalus exclaimed, brushing away more dust.
He’s busy right now, Althalus. Could I take a message?

Why do men always want to tamper with the natural order of things?
“When something breaks, we fix it, that’s all.”
What gave you the absurd idea that [the world]’s broken?
“It’s not the way it was before, Em. To our way of looking at things, that means that it’s broken.”
[...] Change doesn’t necessarily mean improvement, Althalus. Change is just change. “Better” and “worse” are human definitions. The world changes all the time, and no amount of complaining’s going to stop it from changing.

There’s a girl who can probably cut glass with her voice from a mile away [...] Andine’s got the kind of voice you can’t really ignore.