Glen Cook

For once he was as serious as a spear through the gut.

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.

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.

I do not believe in evil absolute. I have recounted that philosophy in specific in the Annals, and it affects my every observation throughout my tenure as Annalist. I believe in our side and theirs, with the good and evil decided after the fact, by those who survive. Among men you seldom find the good with one standard and the shadow with another.

It is not necessarily for mercenary soldiers to know what is going on. It is sufficient for them to do the job for which they have taken the gold. That had been drummed into me from the moment I enlisted. There is neither right nor wrong, neither good nor evil, only our side and theirs. The honor of the company lies within, directed one brother toward another. Without, honor lies only in keeping faith with the sponsor.

Half of confidence is the appearance of confidence.

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.

Might may not make right, but it makes victory.

My apprentices were exasperating. They were competing to see who was laziest.

Leadership tip: Sound confident even when you have no idea. Just do not make a habit of it. They will find you out.

Every time I see a mirror I’m amazed. I end up wondering who’s taken over the outside of me. A disgusting old goat, from the look of him. The kind I used to snicker at when I was twenty. He scares me, Stance. He looks like a dying man. I’m trapped inside him, and I’m not ready to go.

You know you’re getting old when everything aggravates you.

I told her I could not believe in her movement because it did not promise anything for the future except freedom from the tyranny of the past. I told her that what little philosophy I’d detected driving the movement totally ignored human nature. That if the Rebels ever did manage to topple the empire, whatever replaced it would be worse. That was the lesson of history. New regimes, to make sure they survived, were always nastier than the ones before them.

Never underestimate the power of human ingratitude.

He had leaped into the embrace of self-delusion.
There was a lot of that going around.