Glen Cook Quotes

One’s own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid. Death is the only exorcism.

Bomanz had lived his lies so long he often lied to himself.

An old, tired man. That is what I am. What became of the old fire, drive, ambition? There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronizing wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.

You mess with people’s religion and you mess with fire. Even people who don’t much give a damn. Religion is something that gets hammered in early, and never really goes away. And has powers to move which go beyond anything rational.

I have seen it before. Little people have to hate, have to blame someone for their own inadequacies.

Simple minds respond to simple answers.

Nobody knew what the Company wanted. Various witnesses assigned motives according to their own fears. Few came anywhere near the mark.

Oh, ‘twould be marvelous if the world and its moral questions were like some game board, with plain black players and white, and fixed rules, and nary a shade of grey.

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.

My arguments were beginning to sound a little strained to me, too. I was in the position of a priest trying to sell religion.

How to argue with sociopathic reasoning? Lisa was the heart of Lisa’s universe. Other people existed only to be exploited.

Best way out," Elmo observed laconically, "would be to kill everybody who knows anything, then all of us fall on our swords."
"Sounds a little extreme," Goblin opined. "But if you want to go first, I'm right behind you.

Shed swallowed. “That isn’t a plan that does much for my nerves.”
“Your nerves aren’t my problem, Shed. They’re yours. You lost them. Only you can find them again.”

Krage eyed us from a face of stone. “I help you with something, Inquisitor?”
“Probably not. You’d lie to me if the truth would save your soul, you bloodsucker.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere. What do you want, you parasite?”
Tough boy, this Krage. Struck from the same mold as Bullock, but he had drifted into a socially less honored profession. Not much to choose between them I thought. Priest and moneylender.

The essence of sorcery, even for its nonfraudulent practitioners, is misdirection.