Glen > Glen's Quotes

“She had the eyes of everyone who ever cared.”
― 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

“Hard words are for fools and cowards.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

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

“Some men are too dull to feel what might happen. Others torture themselves with maybes and populate their dreams with horrors more terrible than their worst enemy could inflict upon them.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“A Dark time comes.
My time.
If it offends you.
Stop Me.”
― 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

“A man is made of memories. It is all we are. Captured moments, the smell of a place, scenes played out time and again on a small stage. We are memories, strung on storylines--the tales we tell ourselves about ourselves, falling through our lives into tomorrow.”
― Mark Lawrence

“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

“I watched her backside as she went. I thought perhaps I wouldn't die if I could still find time to watch a well-crafted bottom”
― Mark Lawrence, King 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

“Every man has his thorns, not of him, but in him, deep as bones.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“I knew myself broken, to burn over every refusal, to feel my blood rise at the slightest provocation, but knowing and fixing are different things.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“And what makes us human is that sometimes we snap. And in that moment of release we're closer to gods than we know.”
― Mark Lawrence

“The world eats good men for breakfast.”
― Mark Lawrence

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

“A man can drown in shades of grey.”
― Mark Lawrence

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

“I dropped the head and kicked it into the crowd. I say “kicked” but in truth it’s a bad idea to kick a head. I learned that years ago, a lesson that cost me two broken toes. What you want to do is shove the head with the side of your foot, like you’re throwing it. It’s going to roll anyhow so you don’t need that much force. See, the thing about severed heads is the owner no longer has any interest in minimizing the force of the blow, or any ability to do so for that matter. When you kick somebody in the head as you do from time to time, they tend to be actively trying to move themselves out of the way and the contact is lessened. A severed head is a dead weight, even if it’s watching you.

And that exhausts my insights into the kicking of severed heads. Admittedly it’s more than most people have to offer on the subject but there were Mayans who knew a lot more than I do. That of course is a whole different ball-game.”
― Mark Lawrence

“Makin once told me that a man who's got no fear is missing a friend.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“We wrap up our violent and mysterious world in a pretence of understanding. We paper over the voids in our comprehension with science or religion, and make believe that order has been imposed.”
― Mark Lawrence

“It never pays to walk blindly. Especially not in your own castle where familiarity hides so much - even when we have the eyes to see.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“Hangings, beheadings, impalement, oh my!”
― Mark Lawrence

“And when pain bites, men bargain. Boys too. We twist and turn, we plead and beg, we offer our tormentors what he wants so that the hurting will stop. And when there is no torturer to placate, no hooded man with hot irons and tongs, just a burn you can't escape, we bargain with God, or ourselves, depending on the size of our egos.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns