The Broken Empire Quotes

“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

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

“They say that time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“In the end it seems we're just toys, easy to break and hard to mend.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“When you're in a dark place, and your light is going to run out before too long, you get on with things. It's a wonder to me how few people apply that same logic to their lives.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“I kissed her cheek then, because I feared to do it and though commonsense may occasionally bind me, I'll be fucked if fear will.”
― 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

“We wrap up our violent and mysterious world in a pretense of understanding. We paper over the voids of our comprehension with science and religion, and make believe that order has been imposed. And, for the most of it, the fiction works. We skim across the surfaces, heedless of the depths below. Dragonflies flitting over a lake, miles deep, pursuing erratic paths to pointless ends. Until that moment when something from the cold unknown reaches up to take us.
The biggest lies we save for ourselves. We play a game in which we are gods, in which we make choices, and the current follows in our wake. We pretend a separation from the wild. Pretend that a man’s control runs deep, that civilization is more than a veneer, that reason will be our companion in dark places.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“Sometime, it's easier to love someone with flaws you can forgive in return for them forgiving yours.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“Words are blunt instruments, better suited to murder than to making sense of the world.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“If you must run, have something to run toward, so it feels less like cowardice.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“There's a road to hell that is paved with good intentions but it's a long route. The quicker path is paved with the kind of ignorance that clever men who just don't want to know are best at.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“It's an irony of our times that men seeking peace must make war.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“We can’t be trapped by fear. Lives lived within such walls are just slower deaths.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“There are truths you know but will not speak. Even to yourself in the darkness where we are all of us alone. There are memories you see and yet don't see.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“That's not a plan. That's a way to get a death so famously stupid that they'll be laughing about it in alehouses for a hundred years to come," Makin said.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“I would shake the world until its teeth rattled if that was required to have it spit out an answer.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“Take a rest and the world catches up with you. Lesson in life—keep moving.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“I swallowed darkness, and darkness swallowed me. Without light, without the beat if a heart to count the time, you learn that eternity is nothing fear. In fact, if they'd just leave you to it, an eternity alone in the dark can be a welcome alternative to the business of living.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“Clarity of vision is a thing much prized. I find when you turn that clear sight upon yourself—and see through to the truth behind your own actions—it might be better to be blind.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“War, my friends, is a thing of beauty.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“Men who are certain of everything—well perhaps they're not men at all.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“We weren't meant to live forever, nor dwell in solitude. A life without change is no life.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“Go fuck yourself,' I said. I kept it pleasant.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“You can't grow if you're constantly defined by this collection of frozen moments that you keep returning to. And if you can't grow, you're not alive.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns

“Tell me this," I said. "My world. It's not like the one I read about in the oldest books. When they talk about magic, about ghosts, it's as if they are fairy-tales to frighten children. And yet I have seen the dead walk, seen a boy bring fire with just a thought."

Fexler frowned as if considering how to explain. "Think of reality as a ship whose course is set, whose wheel is locked in place by universal constants. Our greatest achievement, and downfall, was to turn that wheel, just a fraction. The role of the observer was always important—we discovered that. If a tree falls in the wood and no one hears it, then it is both standing and not standing. The cat is both alive and dead."

"Who mentioned a fecking cat?”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“I held to my anger, drank from my well of poison. These things are not good things, but at least they're mine.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“But words are only words and they seldom turn a person from their path unless they want to be turned.”
― Mark Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns