Niall Bruckshaw

“What's one more meaningless act of violence on that zoo of a planet?
It would be appropriate.
When in Rome; burn it.”
― Iain M. Banks, The State of the Art

“Armour …’ mused Whirrun, licking a finger and scrubbing some speck of dirt from the pommel of his sword, ‘is part of a state of mind … in which you admit the possibility … of being hit.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes

“But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you.
If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time and never gotten anywhere.”
― Joe Abercrombie