Daniel Abraham > Quotes

“There's ways you can trust an enemy you can't always trust a friend. An enemy's never going to betray your trust.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path

“We say that flowers return every spring, but that is a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and untested.

The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced. It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of renewal is paid.

And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Price of Spring

“That's one of the things Yardem used to tell me that actually made sense. He said that you don't go through grief like it was a chore to be done. You can't push and get finished quicker. The best you can do is change the way you always do, and the time comes when you aren't the same person who was in pain.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path

“I choose not to believe in any gods as an act of charity,” Marcus said. “Charity toward whom?” “Toward the gods. Seems rude to think they couldn’t make a world better than this,”
― Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path

“Possibility is a wide field, dear. "Can't" is a word for small imaginations.”
― Daniel Abraham, A Shadow in Summer

“Sometimes the hand pulls the puppet, sometimes the puppet pulls the hand, but the string runs both ways.”
― Daniel Abraham, A Shadow in Summer

“To lose everything is not the worst that can happen."
"It's starting again, from nothing, with nothing.”
― Daniel Abraham, A Shadow in Summer

“Can you love someone you don't trust?"

"Absolutely," he said. "I have a sister I wouldn't lend two copper lengths if I wanted them back. The problem with loving someone you don't trust is finding the right distance.”
― Daniel Abraham, A Shadow in Summer

“The weapon is poison,' Kit said. 'I believe that the cause we carry it in is just, but that will not protect you. It is not only death to those whose skin it cuts; it holds a deeper violence within it. If you carry it-just that, carry it and nothing more-the poison will still affect you. In time, you will grow ill from it, and eventually, inevitably, it will kill you.'

'It's a sword, Kit,' Marcus said, lifting the green scabbard from it's place. They're all like that.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Tyrant's Law

“Love,' Asa said, 'is like a pigeon shitting over a crowd.'
'How so?'
'Where it lands hasn't got much to do with who deserves it.”
― Daniel Abraham, Rogues

“Objective truth is difficult to come by, and even if you have it, what you can pass on to the next person is the story that you tell about it. In order for truth to be recognized as true, it has to be wrapped in plausibility. Just the same as lies. ("Another Word: Plausibility and Truth”
― Daniel Abraham

“Every nation ends and every empire. Every baby born was going to die, given enough time. If being fated for destruction were enough to take the joy out of things, we’d slaughter children fresh from the womb. But we don’t. We wrap them in warm cloth and we sing to them and feed them milk as if it might all go on forever.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Price of Spring

“Never assume you can survive the future because you've survived the past. Everyone thinks that, and they've all been wrong eventually.”
― Daniel Abraham, A Betrayal in Winter

“Court games aren't fair. They don't judge men by their worth, and they aren't about what's just. Guilty men can hold power their whole lives and be wept for when they pass. Innocent men can be spent like coins because it's convenient. You don't have to have sinned for them to ruin you. If your destruction is useful to them, you'll be destroyed.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path

“Some errors you can only see once you’ve committed them.”
― Daniel Abraham, A Shadow in Summer

“I’m saying there is evil in the world,” Master Kit said, hefting the box on his hip, “and doubt is the weapon that guards against it.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path

“There is great nobility in ordinary people. The world disappoints us all, and the ways we change our own stories to survive that disappointment are beautiful and tragic and hilarious. On balance, I find much more to admire about humanity than to despise.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Tyrant's Law

“As we send our armsmen and sailors away to fight and die together; let there be peace between us. If there cannot be peace in the world, at least let it be welcome here.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Price of Spring

“How long can you pretend to be something before you aren’t pretending anymore?”
― Daniel Abraham, The Widow's House

“Alle dead man are at peace. That's what makes them dead.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path

“I've never seen God," Yardem said.
"But you believe in him," Master Kit said.
"I'm reserving judgement.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path

“Words are empty until you fill them, and how you fill them shapes the world.”
― Daniel Abraham, The King's Blood

“Being doomed doesn't take away from the dignity of the effort, though.”
― Daniel Abraham, A Betrayal in Winter

“We did an evil thing, father."
"What do you think war is? We're men. Not boys swinging sticks at each other and pronouncing the evil wizard's defeat. We do what duty and honor demand, and often what we do is terrible.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path

“The problem with loving someone you don't trust is finding the right distance.”
― Daniel Abraham, A Shadow in Summer

“It’s the problem in seeing too much of the world. In loving too much of it. You can only live in one place at a time. And eventually, you pick your spot, and the memories of all the others just become ghosts.”
― Daniel Abraham, A Betrayal in Winter

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or seen. Every man’s a child until he’s a father. It’s the way the world’s made.”
― Daniel Abraham, A Betrayal in Winter

“I've loved a lot of people, and the word hasn't meant the same thing twice.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path

“People love their fathers. Their sisters. People love dogs or songs or poems. If I've got to be the champion of something, make it something that doesn't change what it means every time someone says it.”
― Daniel Abraham, Rogues

“I think the world is often like that.” “Like what?” “Comic, but only at the right distance.”
― Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path