79 Quotes & Sayings By Mark Lawrence

We’re built of contradictions, all of us. It’s those opposing forces that give us strength, like an arch, each block pressing the next. Give me a man whose parts are all aligned in agreement and I’ll show you madness. We walk a narrow path, insanity to each side. A man without contradictions to balance him will soon veer off. Mark Lawrence

Lucifer spoke thus. Pride took him from heaven, though he sat at God's right hand.' Her voice grew faint, the hint of a whisper. 'In the end pride is the only evil, the root of all sins.'' Pride is all I have. Mark Lawrence

People always want to know things .. . until they hear them, and then it's too late. Knowledge is a rug of a certain size, and the world is larger. It's not what remains uncovered at the edges that should worry you, rather what is swept beneath. Mark Lawrence

When they killed him, Mother wouldn't hold her peace, so they slit her throat. I was stupid then, being only nine, and I fought to save them both. But the thorns held me tight. I've learned to appreciate thorns since. The thorns taught me the game. They let me understand what all those grim and serious men who've fought the Hundred War have yet to learn. You can only win the game when you understand that it IS a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him loose them all. Mark Lawrence

I’ll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment. Mark Lawrence

Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held to be a character flaw. Mark Lawrence

Cold has its own taste. It tastes of a bitten tongue. It coils around you, a living thing, a beast that means to kill you, not with wrath, not with tooth nor claw, but with the mercy of surrender, with the kindness of letting you go gentle into the long night after such a burden of pain and misery. Mark Lawrence

And that’s how it is in this world, boy. Start a tale, just a little tale that should fade and die–take your eye off it for just a moment and when you turn back it’s grown big enough to grab you up in its teeth and shake you. That’s how it is. All our lives are tales. Some spread, and grow in the telling. Others are just told between us and the gods, muttered back and forth behind our days, but those tales grow too and shake us just as fierce. Mark Lawrence

When you become a father, it changes you." Snorri spoke towards the fire’s glow. "You see the world in new ways. Those who are not changed were not properly men to begin with. Mark Lawrence

Out here you need to live in the moments. Watch the world. You're a young man, Jal, a child who's refused to grow up. Do it now, or you'll die a young man. Mark Lawrence

What saves us all are the deeds of fools as often as the acts of the wise. Mark Lawrence

There is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are gone. Mark Lawrence

Men who’ve made choices always feel they own their destiny. Few ever think to ask who shaped and offered up those choices. Who dangles the carrot they think they’ve chosen to follow. Mark Lawrence

I'm a good liar. A great one. And to be a great liar you have to live your lies, to believe them, to the point that when you tell them to yourself enough times, even what's right before your eyes will bend itself to the falsehood. Mark Lawrence

Genuine surprise is a great help when faced with an unwelcome duty. Of course, when it’s the paying of debts you’re forgetting, that can lead to broken fingers. And worse. I guess it’s a form of lying– lying to oneself. And I’m very good at falsehoods. They often say the best liars half-believe their lies– which makes me the very best because if I repeat a lie often enough I can end up believing it entirely, no half measures involved! . Mark Lawrence

Brother Row you could trust to make a long shot with a short bow. You could trust him to come out of a knife fight with somebody else's blood on his shirt. You could trust him to lie, to cheat, to steal, and to watch your back. You couldn't trust his eyes though. He had kind eyes, and you couldn't trust them. Mark Lawrence

To err is human, to forgive is divine... but I’m only a cardinal and cardinals are human, so rather than forgiving you I’m going to err towards beating you with this stick. Mark Lawrence

We all practice self-deception to a degree; no man can handle complete honesty without being cut at each turn. There's not enough room in a man's head for sanity alongside each grief, each worry, each terror that he owns. I’m well used to burying such things in a dark cellar and moving on. Mark Lawrence

It’s often said that cowards make the best torturers. Cowards have good imaginations, imaginations that torment them with all the worst stuff of nightmare, all the horrors that could befall them. This provides an excellent arsenal when it comes to inflicting misery on others. And their final qualification is that they understand the fears of their victim better than the victim does himself. Mark Lawrence

Sometimes our worst fears aren't realized - though in my experience it's only to make room for the fears our imagination was insufficient to house. Mark Lawrence

There are no other choices for you, Prince Jalan, and when there are no choices all men are equally brave. Mark Lawrence

Memory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man’s memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull. Mark Lawrence

It is purity of spirit that will keep corruption from the flesh Mark Lawrence

Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you'll find an edge to cut you. Mark Lawrence

I want her beyond reason. I need to own, consume, worship, devour. What I've made of her in my mind cannot live in flesh. Mark Lawrence

You have my advice. Carry it with you. It won't slow you down. Mark Lawrence

When a course of action is forced upon you it’s best to accept it with grace and milk it for whatever you can get, right up to the moment the first opportunity to weasel out of the deal presents itself. Mark Lawrence

I’ve never seen a man who understands so little about women and yet is so led about by them. Mark Lawrence

I have been too young to know, and I have been too old to care. It’s in that oh so narrow slice between that memories are made. Mark Lawrence

Sometimes I wished I could cut away old memories and let the wind take them. If a sharp knife could pare away the weakness of those days, I would slice until nothing but the hard lessons remained. Mark Lawrence

Every star, turning in the black depth of heaven, burns for no better reason than that humanity raised its face to look. Every great deed needs to be witnessed. Go out there and do something great. Mark Lawrence

I’m a liar and a cheat and a coward, but I will never, ever, let a friend down. Unless of course not letting them down requires honesty, fair play, or bravery. Mark Lawrence

Truth is a weapon and lies are a necessary shield. Mark Lawrence

It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears. Mark Lawrence

A book is as dangerous as any journey you might take. The person who closes the back cover may not be the same one that opened the front one. Treat them with respect. Mark Lawrence

Dark times call for dark choices. Choose me. Mark Lawrence

When you've committed yourself to violence it takes an almost inhuman effort to stop short. It's one of those things that once you've started need to be finished, rather like coitus, interrupting that's a sin, even the priests say so. Mark Lawrence

The way I’d put it, ” said Makin, “is that Rike can’t make an omelet without wading thigh deep in the blood of chickens and wearing their entrails as a necklace. Mark Lawrence

Part of the art of survival as a coward is not letting things get to the point where that cowardice is exposed. Mark Lawrence

Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak. Mark Lawrence

Revenge is a business of calculation, best served cold. Rescue holds more of sacrifice, suicidal danger, and all manner of other madness that should have me running in the opposite direction. Mark Lawrence

Thorn stood without motion, for only when you are truly still can you be the centre. She stood without sound, for only silent can you listen. She stood without fear, for only the fearless can understand their peril. Thorn waited. Fearless as flowers, bright, fragile, open to the sky. Brave, as only those who’ve already lost can be. Mark Lawrence

As a child there's a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one..each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment. Mark Lawrence

He broke off his explanation, seeing in his daughter's eyes the exact moment that a child first understands there are limits on what her parents can do, rather than just limits on what they choose to do. He knelt before her in a moment's silence, somewhat less than he had been just seconds before, and Emy a half step closer to the woman she would one day become. Mark Lawrence

Perhaps I just wanted to know what it was that I wanted. Maybe that is all that growing up means. Mark Lawrence

I've been known to be contrary. When something pushes me, I shove back. Even if the one doing the pushing is me. It would have been easy to gut him then and there. Satisfying. But the need was too urgent. I felt pushed. Mark Lawrence

Assassination is murder with a touch more precision. Brother Sim is precise. Mark Lawrence

All the best secrets are told at night. Mark Lawrence

For the longest time I studied revenge to the exclusion of all else. I built my first torture chamber in the dark vaults of imagination. Lying on bloody sheets in the Healing Hall I discovered doors within my mind that I’d not found before, doors that even a child of nine knows should not be opened. Doors that never close again. I threw them wide. Mark Lawrence

Still, perhaps that's all lives are, all the world is, a collision of vast conflagrations, each sparked from nothing. Mark Lawrence

Better a long ignoble life of shallow pleasures than a short stab at heroism, ending with a short stab. And just because one man plays another doesn’t always mean that it’s not the right direction for both of them. Mark Lawrence

Never having been troubled by a conscience before, I was far from sure what to expect of one, and so when for a minute or two each day at dawn a voice began to whisper to me to be a better man, I decided the shock of recent events had finally woken mine. My conscience had a name– Baraqel. I didn’t like him much. Mark Lawrence

Battles are all about strategy, and strategy pivots on priorities. Since my priorities were Prince Jalan, Prince Jalan, and Prince Jalan, with “looking good” a distant fourth, I took the opportunity to resume running away. I find that the main thing about success is the ability to act in the moment. A hero attacks in the moment; a good coward runs in it. The rest of the world waits for the next moment and ends up as crow food. Mark Lawrence

It's shame that gets us killed. Shame is the anchor, the heaviest burden to carry from the battlefield. Fortunately shame was an affliction I'd never suffered from. Mark Lawrence

Gomst's mouth framed a 'no', but every other muscle in him said 'yes'. You'd think priests would be better liars, what with their jobs and all. Mark Lawrence

It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war. Mark Lawrence

Nothing can be cut away. Even the worst of our memories is part of the foundation that keeps us in the world. Mark Lawrence

We die a little every day and by degrees we’re reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars. Mark Lawrence

Those were great big angry men with sharp swords actually wanting to cut pieces off me. It’s not until you’ve seen a red gaping wound and all the complex little bits inside a man all broken up and sliced open, and known that they weren’t ever getting back together again, and vomited your last two meals over the rocks . it’s not until then that you understand the business of swords properly and, if you’re a sensible man you vow to have nothing to do with it ever again. . Mark Lawrence

I can help you, Jorge. I can give you back your self. I can give you your will.' He held out his hand, palm open. 'Free will has to be taken, ' I said. Mark Lawrence

It’s always better to sit on your dignity in private than to stand on it in public. Mark Lawrence

You would think it best to save your breath for running, but I often find screaming helps. Mark Lawrence

Keep still and your troubles find you. I might not have known much about the unborn, but I sure as hell knew about running! Mark Lawrence

A sensible man may fear certain possibilities, but don’t let fear turn possibility into certainty. Mark Lawrence

We wrap up our violent and mysterious world in a pretense of understanding. We paper over the voids of our comprehension with science and religion, and make believe that order has been imposed. And, for the most of it, the fiction works. We skim across the surfaces, heedless of the depths below. Dragonflies flitting over a lake, miles deep, pursuing erratic paths to pointless ends. Until that moment when something from the cold unknown reaches up to take us. The biggest lies we save for ourselves. We play a game in which we are gods, in which we make choices, and the current follows in our wake. We pretend a separation from the wild. Pretend that a man’s control runs deep, that civilization is more than a veneer, that reason will be our companion in dark places. . Mark Lawrence