Glen Cook

I’ve always known people for whom a goal was everything, who never thought nothing about the consequences of the goal achieved.

Never underestimate the power of human ingratitude.

I do hope that karma is the keystone of the universe—even if I have to come back as a banana slug myself.

The poor idiot is a living testimonial to the fact that everything takes longer and costs more. Even magic can’t get you around that.

Soldiers live. And wonder why.

The sky? Dark as the inside of a priest’s heart, isn’t it?

“I’ve been on my own before, Mather.” And I hadn’t been happy a moment. But happiness is a fleeting creature. It’s no birthright. Not anything I expect but something I accept when I tumble into it. Meantime, power will do nicely.

But how do you get rid of a god? Is there any religion where they teach you that? How to get your god off your back if he gets too damned obnoxious? No. All you ever get is advice on how to bribe them to leave you alone for a few minutes.

I was learning that part of a captain’s job is to delegate. Maybe genius lies in choosing the right person for the right task.

Why do sorcerers always use languages nobody understands? Even Goblin and One-Eye do it. Each has confided that he cannot follow the tongue the other uses. Maybe they make it up?

The soldiers stumbled forward doggedly, cursing the bite of the wind while reminding one another that generals are seldom of sound mind and unbesmirched ancestry. They would not be generals if they were.

It was a day ripped full-grown from the womb of despair.

You are a hired sword. A soldier. You should not be playing philosophical games. Not even with yourself.

We are not really a godless bunch. We are just the sort who ignore the gods—probably in the unconscious hope that the gods will not notice us.

That was not supposed to happen. It was unthinkable, supposedly. And for ordinary people that was mostly true. But not so at a level where men began to believe that they existed outside the usual rules.