Glen Cook > Quotes

“Morning is wonderful. Its only drawback is that it comes at such an inconvenient time of day.”
― Glen Cook, Sweet Silver Blues

“Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent.”
― Glen Cook, Shadow Games

“More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way.”
― Glen Cook, Dreams of Steel

“Evil is relative…You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Soldiers live. He dies and not you, and you feel guilty, because you're glad he died, and not you. Soldiers live, and wonder why.”
― Glen Cook, Soldiers Live

“Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.”
― Glen Cook, Water Sleeps

“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.”
― Glen Cook

“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.”
― Glen Cook, Shadows Linger

“. . .and the thing that you know to be true is the lie that will kill you.”
― Glen Cook

“There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“The man who counts on the aid of a god deserves the help he doesn't get.”
― Glen Cook, Dreams of Steel

“If one chooses sides on emotion then the rebel is the guy to go with. He is fighting for everything men claim to honour, freedom, independance, truth, the right.......all the subjective illusions. All the eternal trigger words. We are minions of the villan of the piece. We confess the illusion and deny the substance.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“No religion I ever encountered made any sense. None are consistent. Most gods are megalomaniacs and paranoid psychotics by their worshippers' description. I don't see how they could survive their own insanity. But it's not impossible that human beings are incapable of interpreting a power so much greater than themselves. Maybe religions are twisted and perverted shadows of truth. Maybe there are forces which shape the world. I myself have never understood why, in a universe so vast, a god would care about something so trivial as worship or human destiny.”
― Glen Cook, The White Rose

“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.”
― Glen Cook, Shadows Linger

“Consistency is the sign of a narrow mind.”
― Glen Cook

“In the night, when the wind dies and silence rules the place of glittering stone, I remember. And they all live again.”
― Glen Cook, Soldiers Live

“I'm an incurable romantic. The essence of romance is an unshakable conviction that next time will be different.”
― Glen Cook

“The only exercise I get is jumping to conclusions.”
― Glen Cook, The White Rose

“Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of 'somedays'. Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English."

[The Instrumentalities of the Night: An Interview with Glen Cook, The SF Site, September 2005]”
― Glen Cook

“Consider little children. There are not many of them not cute and lovable and precious, sweet as whipped honey and butter. So where do all the wicked people come from?”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled towards absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks.”
― Glen Cook, Shadow Games

“Any man who barely sustains an armistice with himself has no business poking around in an alien soul.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“My favorite sport is female and my favorite food is beer.”
― Glen Cook, Cold Copper Tears

“I was my usual charming morning self, threatening blood feud with anyone fool enough to disturb my dreams.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“You who come after me, scribbling these Annals, by now realize that I shy off portraying the whole truth about our band of blackguards. You know they are vicious, violent, and ignorant. They are complete barbarians, living out their cruelest fantasies, their behavior tempered only by the presence of a few decent men. I do not often show that side because these men are my brethren, my family, and I was taught young not to speak ill of kin. The old lessons die hardest.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies. We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Only a conquerer bothers to honor a fallen foe.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“I do not want to die, Croaker. All that I am shrieks against the unrighteousness of death. All that I am, was, and probably will be, is shaped by my passion to evade the end of me.”
― Glen Cook, The White Rose

“Water sleeps, but Enemy never rests.”
― Glen Cook, She is the Darkness

“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.”
― Glen Cook, Shadows Linger