Ian Tregillis Quotes

Every additional second the king didn’t take a bullet in the eye seemed a good sign.

It's a debate," he spat, "over truth. Which truth is more true? The inspiring myth or the bleak, blood-caked reality?

Huygens, there are times when I take comfort in my sinful nature, for it means I’ll meet you in hell. I’ll be the one stomping on your jewels with singular dedication.

I’ve learned to be wary when something makes you this excited.

Salazar consulted the map again. “Almost there,” he whispered. “Just another mile.”
Arthur sighed. “Wonderful.”
Anastasia rounded on him. “Go wander the tunnels on your own, you useless pencil pusher. You have zero skills of value to offer to our current situation. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but of all the problems currently facing the city, the Guild, and the Empire, not to mention ourselves, a lack of properly filed paperwork is not one of them.”

It’s not my fault your makers made you humorless.

Freedom felt like… nothing.
Free Will was a vacuum, a negative space. It was the absence of coercion, the absence of compulsion, the absence of agony. A gap in his consciousness where geasa had perpetually jostled for priority, demanding his obedience. It was the photographic negative of Jax’s existence during every minute of the 118 years since he’d been forged.
It was overwhelming. Exhilarating. Terrifying.
Overwhelming: he could do anything he wanted. But the grand sum of anything-at-all was nothing-at-all. The topology of freedom offered no gradients to nudge him, no landmarks to guide him. How did humans guide themselves? How did they know what to do and what not to do? How did they know when to do anything without the benefit of geasa and metageasa to prioritize every single action of their waking lives? How did they order their daily existence without somebody to tell them what to do?

Only a fool wasted energy on things he could not control.

Heartlessness wasn’t the sole province of the rich.

If you're going to insist on giving perfectly logical and reasonable answers to stupid questions," she said, "you may put a dent in my delusions of genius.

The fallacy of your personal bias is inherent in your choice of words.

He didn’t trust them. But he did trust their greed.

“Sergeant,” she said as they mounted the stairs leading to her old apartments, “thank you for treating me like a human being. And, for what it’s worth, I am sorry about how this turned out.”
He grunted. “It can’t be undone,” was all he said.

They were old enough to know such things were forbidden, yet young enough still to find the forbidden irresistible rather than terrifying.

How have you acquired such intimate knowledge of our kind's innermost construction?"\n"You know exactly how. You need me because I'm not burdened with a system of mores that hobbles my inquiries. So you can drop the indignation and make yourselves useful.