Glen Cook Quotes

A sign of advancing age. You start obsessing about how much you have to get done in the time that you have left.

Time is the most wicked of all villains.

I am not religious. I cannot conceive of gods who would give a damn about humanity’s frothy carryings-on. I mean, logically, beings of that order just wouldn’t. But maybe there is a force for greater good, created by our unconscious minds conjoined, that becomes an independent power greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe, being a mindthing, it is not time-bound. Maybe it can see everywhere and everywhen and move pawns so that what seems to be today’s victory becomes the cornerstone of tomorrow’s defeat.
Maybe weariness did things to my mind.

There were too many secret things going on. And too many perfectly banal, openmouthed evils driven by ambition or fanaticism distracting everyone from the creeping apocalypse.

Something he had heard some wise man say. About the three stages of empire, the three generations. First came the conquerors, unstoppable in war. Then came the administrators, who bound it all together into one apparently unshakable, immortal edifice. Then came the wasters, who knew no responsibility and squandered the capital of their inheritance upon whims and vices. And fell to other conquerors.

An adventure is somebody else slogging through the mud and snow while suffering from trench foot, ringworm, dysentery and starvation, being chased by people with their hearts set on murder or more. I have been there. I have done that, playing both parts. I do not recommend it. Be content with a nice farm or shop. Make lots of babies and bring them up to be good people.

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

All is not lost. But neither is it found.

Desperate people will do what they must to survive. Only a fool would expect the results to be pretty.

Not dangerous at all. Not even that lucky. But a sufficiently paranoid mind will discern patterns and threats where only fortune has conspired.

Man, woman and child, the people of Shadowcatch were privy to the one true secret of the universe: there is always a darker shadow lurking beyond the one whose face you can see.

Old folks called the winter a harbinger of worse to come. But old folks always see today’s weather as more harsh than that of yore. Or milder. Never, never the same.

Rage is a red, near-animate force, as bloated with compassion as a starving serpent.

Death will find a way.
Even the gods must pass.

Like most villains, he was wicked only most of the time and mainly in small-minded ways.