Daniel Polansky > Quotes

“It’s a dangerous thing, pretense. A man ought to know who he is, even if he isn’t proud to be it.”
― Daniel Polansky, Tomorrow, the Killing

“I remember the lightning in the air, and the lovers bidding goodbye to each other in the streets, and I can tell you what I think. We went to war because going to war is fun, because there's something in the human breast that trills at the thought, although perhaps not the reality, of murdering its fellows in vast numbers. Fighting a war ain't fun - fighting a war is pretty miserable. But starting a war? Hell, starting a war is better than a night floating on daeva's honey.”
― Daniel Polansky, Low Town

“The dangerous men were still asleep, their blades sheathed next to their beds. The really dangerous men had been up for hours, and their quills and ledgers were getting hard use.”
― Daniel Polansky, Low Town

“I’ve heard people speak of themselves as addicted to reading, but I think those people never stole from their family so they could afford this month’s serial, or sucked off a sailor for a new book of short stories.”
― Daniel Polansky, She Who Waits

“Thus far, the best that could be said for the day was that it was half over.”
― Daniel Polansky, Low Town

“Common wisdom affirms against the drinking of whiskey during daylight hours, and while I can see the merits of the argument, it is not one to which I hold. True, a few fingers of liquor, or even a wide-stretched palm, degrades your ability to cope with the world's troubles, miseries and horrors; but it also makes you less concerned about them, and since the world is certain to throw more at you than you can handle regardless, I think it a more than equitable transaction. People call me the Warden.
People call me a lot of things, but the Warden is the only one you could say inside a church.”
― Daniel Polansky, A Drink Before We Die

“For a while a person is a junkie and a bartender or a junkie and a father or a junkie and a thief, but after a while he’s just a junkie.”
― Daniel Polansky, She Who Waits

“I wonder if you're fast as they say," Bessie Weasel chirruped, her hand slowly straying toward the belt.
"Wondering is free," Cinnabar said finally, his voice soft and low. "Certainty has its price".”
― Daniel Polansky, The Builders

“Somewhere along the line people reduce themselves to numbers in a ledger, and at that point you’re truly damned. It’s a rather concise definition of power – when you no longer need to look at the names.”
― Daniel Polansky, She Who Waits

“You grow up reading stories, and you start to think your life is one. Every punchline has a set-up; every action a motive. But that’s horseshit – we’re all just stumbling about blind. You do something and decide why you did it afterward.”
― Daniel Polansky, Tomorrow, the Killing

“Every man and woman is distinct from every other. But every mob is the same mob, whether composed of mineworkers or monarchs.”
― Daniel Polansky, Those Above

“It’s an odd fact about lunatics and junkies, but every one I’d ever met is just dying to share their life wisdom.”
― Daniel Polansky, Tomorrow, the Killing

“The two old friends stood silently in the fading light, though you wouldn’t have known it to look at them. That they were old friends, I mean. Anyone could see it was getting dark.”
― Daniel Polansky, The Builders

“There is a corner of every man’s soul that would prefer him dead. That whispers poison in his ear in the still hours of the evening, puts spurs to his side when he stands atop a ledge. For the weak and the misbegotten, the suggestion alone proves sufficient, and the unfortunate runs himself a hot bath and adds his life-blood to it, or drinks a few pints of backyard whiskey and goes swimming in the canal. But most of us are too stubborn or cowardly to make a clean go of it, and this bit that hates us has to start thinking sly.”
― Daniel Polansky, Tomorrow, the Killing

“If the human race has ever invented an institution more effective in the propagation of intellectual and ethical cripples than the nobility, I have yet to stumble across it.”
― Daniel Polansky, Low Town

“It surprised M not at all to discover that though the library had technically been closed for hours, there was a small door in the back that was still open, and that it led to a long, hushed corridor, and then into a chamber, which was more like the nave of an immense cathedral than the checkout room in a library. Libraries—like train stations, crossroads, church belfries, and attics—are places where worlds leak together, where the Management, in its ineffable wisdom, tends not to look too closely on what goes on.”
― Daniel Polansky, A City Dreaming

“Our language has yet to develop a proper send-off for leaving a close friend’s deathbed.”
― Daniel Polansky, She Who Waits

“There is no such thing as truth, there is only belief, and belief is power.”
― Daniel Polansky, The Seventh Perfection

“There are some things a man can’t fake, and lethality is one of them—a lapdog might learn to howl, even bare its teeth on occasion, but that don’t make it a wolf.”
― Daniel Polansky, Low Town

“The Questioner was repacking his tools with a vague air of disappointment. Deciding my legs were steady enough to carry me, I propped myself to my feet, then turned towards my would-be torturer. 'You got a cigarette?' I asked.
He shook his head, the burned red crown of his hood bobbing. 'I don't smoke,' he said without taking his eyes off his work. 'That stuff will kill you.”
― Daniel Polansky, Low Town

“Be careful,' I hissed, then released him. 'Keep one eye on your back, and two on your best friend.'
'That's three eyes.'
'You'll need four to survive what's coming,' I said.”
― Daniel Polansky, She Who Waits

“The lower you are on the pole, the more events seem to be governed by chance. Climb up a few steps and you realize that there’s an order to the whole thing, the dice are loaded and the cards well marked.”
― Daniel Polansky, She Who Waits

“Speechifying was never my forte – one on one I can generally figure out what I need to do to get someone moving in my direction, but pool enough of them together and the sheer mass of idiocy becomes immobile.”
― Daniel Polansky, Tomorrow, the Killing

“I know none of that’s true, of course – your impulse for self-destruction is too sharp to be anything but authentic.”
― Daniel Polansky, She Who Waits

“Evil is best served without a patina of hypocrisy.”
― Daniel Polansky, She Who Waits

“the body can decay right in front of you, go from a tool that expresses your will to an anchor dragging you down to hell.”
― Daniel Polansky, She Who Waits

“He was as happy as a pup on Christmas morning, as a maid on her wedding night, as a wolf before his bloody red supper.”
― Daniel Polansky, The Builders

“I’m not agitated,’ I said. ‘I’m just violent. What gets done to you will be the consequence of cautious premeditation.”
― Daniel Polansky, She Who Waits

“Really, I have to applaud you. Anyone can kill, but to break a man? To reach inside him and make him something else? That takes talent.”
― Daniel Polansky, Tomorrow, the Killing

“And indeed, it was not her steady hand that made Boudica the greatest sniper who had ever sighted down a target. Nor her eyes, eyes that had picked out the Captain long moments before anyone else could have even identified him as a mouse. It was that she understood how to wait, to empty herself of everything in anticipation of that one perfect moment - and then to fill that moment with death.”
― Daniel Polansky, The Builders