Brent > Brent's Quotes

“You have to be grateful for the small things, when any minute might be your last.”
― Joe Abercrombie

“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

“I’d be happier on a horse,” Makin said.
“I’d be happier on a giant mountain goat,” I said. “One that shat diamonds. Until we find some, we’re walking.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.”
― Mary Renault, The Persian Boy

“Practice makes the master.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“With Snorri troubles were always put front and centre and dealt with. My style was more to shove them under the rug until the floor got too uneven to navigate, and then to move house.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

“Still, children hope in ways adults find hard to imagine. They carry their dreams before them, fragile, in both arms, waiting for the world to trip them.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Liar's Key

“Every fortune-teller I ever met was a faker. First thing you should do to a soothsayer is poke them in the eye and say, ‘Didn’t see that coming, did you?”
― Mark Lawrence, The Liar's Key

“The breaking of day changes all things, Snorri. Nothing endures beyond the count of the sun. Pile a sufficient weight of mornings upon a thing and it will change. Even the rocks themselves will not outlast the morning.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Liar's Key

“Nights spent on mountains are not to be recommended. Nights where the dark is full of the sounds of dead men trying to climb up to where you're shivering under thin blankets, less so.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

“I’ve always found hitting a man from behind to be the best way to go about things. This can sometimes be accomplished by dint of a simple ruse. Classics such as, “What’s that over there?” work surprisingly often, but for truly optimal results it’s best if the person doesn’t ever know you were there.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

“The road forgets. Make your life a journey, keep moving toward what you want, leave behind anything that's too heavy to carry.”
― Mark Lawrence

“Give us everything we ask for and suddenly it's too much.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Liar's Key

“There's a problem with continually stamping down on the least sensible instincts that drive men to recklessly endanger themselves. Even the most reasonable and level-headed of us have only limited space to store such unwanted emotion. You keep putting the stuff away, shoving it to the back of your mind but like an over-full cupboard there comes a point where you try to cram one more thing into it and all of a sudden something snaps, the catch gives, the door bursts open and everything inside spills out on top of you.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Liar's Key

“Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do― to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“And I will die, and you will die, and we all will die, and even the stars will fade out one after another in time.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Give him what he wants,” Jorg had said. “Then take what you want. Nobody is more vulnerable than in their moment of victory, and you know that whatever you do this man will never let you go while he lives.” I”
― Mark Lawrence, The Wheel of Osheim

“The things that time wants to keep, it buries.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Wheel of Osheim