Pier > Pier's Quotes

“The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before

“Our every thought stems from the thoughts of others. Our every word is but a repetition of words spoken before. Every time we listen, we allow the movements of another soul to carry our own.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before

“To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so?”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before

“Do not mistake me, Inrithi. In this much Conphas is right. You are all staggering drunks to me. Boys who would play at war when you should kennel with your mothers. You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill not daring. It is not a trial of souls, nor the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them.

You have offered me war, and I have accepted. Nothing more. I will not regret your losses. I will not bow my head before your funeral pyres. I will not rejoice at your triumphs. But I have taken the wager. I will suffer with you. I will put Fanim to the sword, and drive their wives and children to the slaughter. And when I sleep, I will dream of their lamentations and be glad of heart.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before

“The Dûnyain,” Kellhus said after a time, “have surrendered themselves to the Logos, to what you would call reason and intellect. We seek absolute awareness, the self-moving thought. The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before? Only the Logos allows one to mitigate that slavery. Only knowing the sources of thought and action allows us to own our thoughts and our actions, to throw off the yoke of circumstance. And only the Dûnyain possess this knowledge, plainsman. The world slumbers, enslaved by its ignorance. Only the Dûnyain are awake. Moënghus, my father, threatens this.” Thoughts”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness that Comes Before

“To live is to be vulnerable. A thin membrane of a soap bubble separates one from impenetrable hell. Ice on the road. The unlucky division of an aging cell. A child picks up a pill from the floor. Words stick to each other, line up, obedient to the great harmony of speech...”
― Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

“There are concepts that cannot be imagined but can be named. Having received a name, they change, flow into a different entity, and cease to correspond to the name, and then they can be given another, different name, and this process—the spellbinding process of creation—is infinite: this is the word that names it, and this is the word that signifies. A concept as an organism, and text as the universe.”
― Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

“But no one had ever been saved by memories, no one had been protected by words and pledges, and those loved greatly by others died too.”
― Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

“She knew herself to be a word spoken by the sunlight. She laughed at the fear of death. She understood what she was born for and what she was destined to carry out. All this happened while the lightning remained in the sky, a white flash.”
― Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

“Nikolai Valerievich was smiling, as if she’d said something amusing.
“That’s a perfectly ordinary situation, Sasha. You don’t want to learn? But what do you want? Look into your soul, and you will realize: all you really want is fun and pleasure. Any instance of learning is coercion. Any form of culture must be enforced, alas. You are immature internally, and all of you must be forced, and forced cruelly.”
― Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

“To her, existence consisted of days, and each day seemed to run like a circular ribbon—or, better yet, a bike chain, moving evenly over the cogs. Click—another change of speed, days became a little different, but they still flowed, still repeated, and that very monotony concealed the meaning of life . . .”
― Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

“There are words that are simply trash, refuse, they turn into nothing immediately after they are spoken. Others throw shadows, hideous and pathetic, and sometimes gorgeous and powerful, capable of saving a dying soul. But only a few of these words become human beings and pronounce other words. And everyone in the world has a chance of encountering someone whom he himself spoke out loud . . .”
― Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

“How does one formulate the order “Do not be afraid” without the negative particle “not”? “Be brave,” Sasha whispered.”
― Marina Dyachenko, Assassin of Reality

“The Empire, the world. One and the same. And if they were not yet so: make them so, for this is the right and correct will of the stars.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“You do devour. Isn’t that what we’re talking about? A war of annexation.” “It’s not—devour would be if we were xenophobes or genocides, if we didn’t bring new territories into the Empire.” Into the world. Shift the pronunciation of the verb, and Three Seagrass could have been saying if we didn’t make new territories real, but Mahit knew what she meant: all the ways that being part of Teixcalaan gave a planet or a station prosperity. Economic, cultural—take a Teixcalaanli name, be a citizen. Speak poetry.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“To live is to be vulnerable. To love is to fear. And the one who is not afraid—that person is calm like a boa constrictor and cannot love.”
― Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

“Like many arrogant men, Proyas thought his insults an extension of his honesty.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before

“The world has long ceased to be the author of your anguish.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before