Mark Lawrence > Quotes

“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, Prince of Thorns

“Tell me, tutor,' I said. 'Is revenge a science, or an art?”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“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, King of Thorns

“There’s something brittle in me that will break before it bends.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“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, Red Sister

“Hate will keep you alive where love fails”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“The biggest lies we save for ourselves.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“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, King of Thorns

“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, Prince of Thorns

“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, King of Thorns

“Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“This is where the wise man turns away. This is where the holy kneel and call on God. These are the last miles, my brothers. Don't look to me to save you. Don't think I will not spend you. Run if you have the wit. Pray if you have the soul. Stand your ground if courage is yours. But don't follow me.

Follow me, and I will break your heart.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“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, King of Thorns

“Few things worth having can be got easily.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“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, Prince of Thorns

“A Dark time comes.
My time.
If it offends you.
Stop Me.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“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, Prince of Fools

“No half measures. Some things can’t be cut in half. You can’t half-love someone. You can’t half-betray, or half-lie.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“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, Prince of Thorns

“Is this going to be one of those times when you pretend not to have a plan until the last moment? And then turn out to really not have one?- Sir Makin to King Jorg”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“Hold to a thing long enough, a secret, a desire, maybe a lie, and it will shape you.”
― Mark Lawrence

“I think maybe we die every day. Maybe we're born new each dawn, a little changed, a little further on our own road. When enough days stand between you and the person you were, you're strangers. Maybe that's what growing up is. Maybe I have grown up.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“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, Prince of Fools

“I may be running out of options, but running out isn't an option.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“I've always seen 'no' as a challenge rather than an answer.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“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, King of Thorns

“There's a slope down toward evil, a gentle gradient that can be ignored at each step, unfelt. It's not until you look back, see the distant heights where you once lived, that you understand your journey.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“Dark times call for dark choices. Choose me.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“There is something brittle in me that will break before it bends. Perhaps if the [the enemy] had brought a smaller army I might have had the sense to run. But he overdid it.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns