All men have talents. Some build, some paint, some write, some fight. For me it is different. - David Gemmell

Look around you - this [land] is cold, inhospitable. Only the strong survive. Here there are no green fields, no verdant pastures. A warrior is old by the time he is thirty. We have no energy to spend on pretty words.

Your face may be gone, but you know who you are.

The Pinance laughed. “I hate the man, but I have never before seen him as a fool or a coward.”
“He is not a military man, my lord. He is a schemer, skilled in the art of politics and treachery.”
“It seems to me that those two beasts are one and the same,” said the Pinance.