David Anthony Durham > Quotes

“She would never be caught unprepared again, she swore to herself. She would never trust. Never love. Never put faith in other human beings again. She would learn all she could of the shape and substance of the world, and she would find a way to survive in it.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Revenge is the easiest of emotions to understand and to manipulate.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“She realized that she had naïvely believed that the workings of the world revolved around her and her family. Never before had she acknowledged that somebody else’s life might alter hers.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“You've got to understand that the world's full of men who are little better than animals.... Problem is that a man is different from an animal. In the quiet afterward we know when we've done wrong.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“I sleep lightly and tread to keep my head out of the sea of dreams.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“She realized that the world was a dance of a million fates. In this dance she was but a single soul.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“One must find rhythms others’ ears don’t hear.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“I believe that if you speak from your heart each time you open your mouth, you cannot go wrong.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Scourge of the Betrayer is as harsh and profane as anything RichardK Morgan or Joe Abercrombie serves up. Fortunately, Saylards has the skills -and the humor - to pull it off. Snappy dialogue, political intrigue, shadycharacters, gripping action sequences, a poor guy that has no idea what he’sgotten himself into... Yeah, there’s a lot to like about this debut.”
― David Anthony Durham

“What sense does it make that one god would create all? Why would he create … rabbits. Soft and cuddly, yes? And then create foxes that hunt them down and tear them to shreds? Why do that? That god is no god to the rabbits. He is a demon that favors their enemies. But nor does that god honor the fox, for he creates other animals bigger than it. Creates wolves. Creates you Acacians. Even you, Rialus, could kill a fox if you were lucky and had the right weapon.” “And if the creature was lame or old,” Jàfith added.”
― David Anthony Durham, The Sacred Band

“She was a nightmare of beauty and menace living right there above them, a being part raptor, part human, part divine. She knew without question that she could sweep down on them and inflict upon all of them a terrible vengeance if she wished. She had the capacity for violence within her, residing beside her heart.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“They fed him a diet made up entirely of knowledge.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“To fatten a pig, a farmer will feed him well. The pig must think his life a paradise, never knowing he gorges himself so that he will be fatter for the knife later on.”
― David Anthony Durham, The Other Lands

“Who can explain just how he became the person he is? It does not happen this day or that one. It is a gradual evolution that happens largely unheralded. He simply was who he now was.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Respect flows two ways and can mean as much to the giver as to the one receiving.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Imagine, they said, living an existence where the words out of your mouth changed the very fabric of the world around you.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“The world was not to be trusted. Loved persons were always stolen. Dreams always squashed. That was life as she understood it.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Again he thought of his own losses, and he wondered why it was that the things a person had lost— or might lose— defined him more than the things he yet possessed.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“She sat, rediscovering the fullness of her first tongue in one long submersion. Again and again she would pause on a word Melio uttered. She would roll it around in her mind, feeling the contours of it. At times her mouth gaped open, her lips moving as if she were drinking in his words instead of breathing.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“She said, A king is the best and worst of men. Of course. Of course.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“This really isn’t fair,” Mena said. “What is ‘fair’?” asked one of the watchers called Devoth. “I don’t know this word.”
― David Anthony Durham, The Sacred Band

“The wise say many things, enough to confuse the rest of us”
― David Anthony Durham, The Other Lands

“The moment you begin to consider having more than someone else, you begin to fear you might end up with less than someone else.”
― David Anthony Durham, The Sacred Band

“No, I haven’t decided where to live yet.” He thought, I haven’t decided if I want to live yet.”
― David Anthony Durham, The Sacred Band

“No, make something different from war. Don't allow your enemies to be enemies. Make them something else, because otherwise they have a power over you that they should not have. If you think in the same ways as the past, you will only get new versions of the past. Think differently. That's what I'm saying.”
― David Anthony Durham, The Sacred Band

“When she spread her wings and leaped screeching into the air she had not the slightest doubt that every hand below her would stretch to catch her. And if one could leap from a height with no fear of falling, could one not be said to possess the secret of flight? Just like a bird, just like a god.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“Or was it just the eyes of the watcher that gave character to the world?”
― David Anthony Durham, The Sacred Band

“Very little of what he learned of people’s actions began or ended with either the noble ideals or the fiendish wickedness he had been taught lay behind all great struggles. There was something comforting in this.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“It’s a mass agitation of ambitious cocks!”
― David Anthony Durham, The Other Lands

“God would not be God if men could understand him entirely.”
― David Anthony Durham, The Risen