Tad Williams Quotes

It was easy to hate if he did not think, Simon discovered.

She realized now that she knew little about people outside the courts of Nabban and Erkynland, although she had always thought herself a shrewd judge of humanity. However, it was a larger and much more complicated world on the other side of the castle walls than she had ever suspected.

Tiamak closed his eyes to make a short prayer of thanks, hoping that the gods, like children, could be confirmed in good behavior by praise.

Only the mercenaries were here by choice. To Simon, the minds of men who would come to this of their own will were suddenly as incomprehensible as the thoughts of spiders or lizards—less so, even, for the small creatures of the earth almost always fled from danger. These were madmen, Simon realized, and that was the direst problem of the world: that madmen should be strong and unafraid, so that they could force their will on the weak and peace-loving. If God allowed such madness to be, Simon could not help thinking, then He was an old God who had lost His grip.

It was impossible to see warfare as anything other than what Morgenes had once termed it: a kind of hell on earth that impatient mankind had arranged so it would not have to wait for the afterlife.

The last thing a drunkard loses, you see, is his cunning: it outlasts his soul by a long season.

I gave up the love of learning for the love of oblivion—the two cannot live together.

If the strong can bully the weak without shame, then how are we different from the beasts of forest and field?

She had little doubt that whatever happened to her on this drifting ship was of scant interest to a God who could allow her to reach this sorry state in the first place.

Sometimes doing the gods’ bidding required a hardened heart.

She didn’t know which she liked less, having people tell lies about her or having people know the truth.

The manchildren, the mortals, have many ideas of what happens after they die, and wrangle about who is right and who is wrong. These disagreements often come to bloodshed, as if they wished to dispatch messengers who could discover the answer to their dispute. Such messengers, as far as I know of mortal philosophy, never return to give their brethren the taste of truth they yearn for.

There are no promises in life, Sludig, but it seems to me smarter to take fewer chances.

As with all dwellings," she said, "of mortals and immortals both, it is the living that makes a house—not the doors, not the walls.

Do you get tired, singing?" she asked.
Gan Itai laughed quietly. "Does a mother grow tired raising her children? Of course, but it is what I do.