Alex

“I mistook stars reflected in a pond at night for those in the sky.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Czas pogardy

“The terror that took Baru came from the deepest part of her soul. It was a terror particular to her, a fundamental concern—the apocalyptic possibility that the world simply did not permit plans, that it worked in chaotic and unmasterable ways, that one single stroke of fortune, one well-aimed bowshot by a man she had never met, could bring total disaster. The fear that the basic logic she used to negotiate the world was a lie. Or, worse, that she herself could not plan: that she was as blind as a child, too limited and self-deceptive to integrate the necessary information, and that when the reckoning between her model and the pure asymbolic fact of the world came, the world would devour her like a cuttlefish snapping up bait.”
― Seth Dickinson, The Traitor Baru Cormorant

“It's not what the Masquerade does to you that you should you fear, she wanted to tell Ake. It's what the Masquerade convinces you to do to yourself.”
― Seth Dickinson, The Traitor Baru Cormorant

“I thought you specialised in dishonest finesse?"
"I also do a brisk trade in putting knives to peoples' throats and shouting at them," said Locke.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies