Assassin's Apprentice Quotes
"I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound."
"My life has been a web of secrets, secrets that even now are unsafe to share."
"Perhaps it is even probable. One hopes it is not the case."
"It did not let me slip on the icy streets, but it did not let me escape my fate, either."
"I recall that slush had soaked through my clothes, so my feet and legs were wet and cold."
"I have been to Withywoods. Its name bears no relationship to its appearance."
"For the most part, folk laughed to see a grown man cower back from a child."
"Business here was going on as usual with little allowance for the carnival atmosphere up in the keep."
"And had anyone told me I was passing the day with a pack of beggar brats denied entrance to the keep because of their light-fingered ways, I would have been shocked."
"If he had been given a chance, a dog could have made something of himself."
"A bastard is a unique thing. Put a signet ring on his hand and send him forth, and you have created a diplomat no foreign ruler will dare to turn away."
"Is it the nature of the world that all things seek a rhythm, and in that rhythm a sort of peace?"
"He was a man who used life as it comes to him, not one who shaped it to his bidding."
"I learned to do as Molly did, stealing bits of time for myself."
"I was and was not a member of the keep community. I avoided some and I observed some and I obeyed some. But with none did I feel a bond."
"In royalty, that is a most lamentable failing."
"To be as a beast among beasts, simply for the sake of the knowledge it brings you?"
"Wisest course of all is not to have him notice you. But I didn’t warn you about that, and now it’s too late."
"He calls a bitch a bitch, and a bastard a bastard, does Burrich."
"Somehow I survived the day, though the memory of how fades into a blessedly vague haze."
"A ruler must be of all his people, for one can only rule what one knows."
"Loneliness found me every night as I vainly tried to find a small and cozy spot in my big bed."
"Learning is never wrong. Even learning how to kill isn’t wrong. Or right. It’s just a thing to learn, a thing I can teach you."
"Titles are inherited solely by order of birth."
"The welfare of the people belongs to the people, and they have the right to object if their duke stewards it poorly."
"I learned to lie very well. I do not think it was taught me accidentally."
"King Shrewd can appreciate a good jest when he's shown one."
"Crawl down the stairs, you little craven. And the next time I summon you... Hah, if I summon you again, come prepared to obey me. Or don’t come at all."
"To return to the drudgery of living day to day, going from task to task seemed impossible."
"I could not remember how I had managed before when I had been so alone."
"These were very difficult questions for a boy’s mind, and I found no answers that helped me."
"My state of distraction was such that I let a much younger boy deliver a stout clout to my skull."
"In darkness and stillness, I lay waiting for a summons I would not dare answer."
"There isn't much in a man's head that can't be cured by working and taking care of something else."
"Tomorrow we'll do the same again. And again. Until one day you get up and find out that whatever it was didn't kill you after all."
"The dimness penetrated my eyes, so that I felt sleepy without feeling tired."
"I choose to put in writing here what I absolutely know as truth."
"The pale parts of his head contrasted sharply with his ruddy cheeks and nose; it made him look very strange."
"His public life should have ended with his abdication; how tactless of him to draw further attention to himself by actually dying."
"You are such a hatchling yet... but listen to me. For now, change nothing that you do."
"You're a bastard, boy. We're always a risk and a vulnerability. We're always expendable."
"We are the King’s, boy. His exclusively, in a way perhaps you have not thought about."
"When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities."
"Damn Chivalry," he said absently. "This is his kind of a knot, not mine."
"But men don’t talk about times spent among the pillows with a lady. And assassins don’t talk about... our business."
"You will work alone, with no counsel other than your own."
"That which we do not know is almost more significant than that which we do."
"Thank all, it was not fancy, but the plain simple food I had been craving all day."
"She bent over the babe. 'Here, my sweet, my lamb. Here, my darling. This will help. Take a little. Oh, sweetie, can’t you even lap? Open your mouth, then. Come now, open your mouth.'"
"You’re not helping him by holding him that tight. He can scarce breathe. Set him down."
"But she let me take the bundled dog from her arms and unwrap him from several layers of cloth. I set him on the table."
"He looks and acts like he’s got something lodged in his gullet. Could he have gotten into bones or feathers?"
"Please, Lady Grace. I ask that you ask your lord to man Watch Island’s tower with the best of his men, to put an end to the strife between Rippon and Shoaks Duchies."
"Let the watchtowers shine brighter than the gems in these rings. Let the vigilant soldiers who man them encircle our coast as these pearls used to encircle my neck."
"Wake up, Fitz," he whispered hoarsely. "A runner’s come to the keep, from Lady Thyme. She requires you immediately."
"Luck. Same luck your father had. Your kitchen diplomacy may be enough to turn the situation around, if that is all there is to it."
"Imagine water with no weight or wetness. That is how those folk were to me."
"It’s been a long night of travel for us, and you’re tired. Too long without sleep, and the mind starts to play tricks, with waking dreams and—"
"Evil times have come to us, and they will be with us for a long time. It is a time when good men must create whatever weapons they can."
"But as time went on those loyal to El dwindled."
"So enraged was El by this blasphemy that he would not receive the old man into his sea, but instead cast him up upon the shore and cursed him that he could never more sail, but neither could he die."
"Thus is the tale told. And so the Pocked Man has become the harbinger of death and disease, and a rebuke for those who live soft and easily because their lands bear well."
"Sometimes," grumbled Chade, "it is better to be defiantly wrong than silent."
"And everywhere the old man went, disease followed in his wake."
"But Verity himself, I knew, had no time to think about well-warmed beds, or any sort of bed at all."
"They stole without remorse, even from their own children, and squandered coin and gobbled food like gluttons."
"But at least such an edict would give us a common response."
"Stop it," he hissed, and ignored my studied look of shocked innocence.
"She would go all day with her laces undone because she could not tie them herself, yet would suffer no one to tie them for her."
"She mastered reading and ciphering at an early age, and from that time studied any scroll, book, or tablet that came her way with voracious and indiscriminate interest."
"It is difficult to explain what I felt. It is a heady thing to be suddenly proclaimed the center of someone’s world, even if that someone is an eight-week-old puppy."
"To master the Skill, he must first teach us to master ourselves."
"He made it an honor to be standing out in the cold, bare feet going numb against the chill stone."
"I'll feed the puppy," he told me. "I'll even try to take him outside for a bit each day. But I won't clean up his messes."
"The Skill, at its simplest, is the bridging of thought from person to person."
"For it is said, one may ask of the Elderlings, but what they answer may not be the question you ask, but the one you should have asked."
"The intensity of this exultation when speaking to the Elderlings is a thing for which we have no comparison."
"Days of his belittling should have made me numb to his mockery. Instead, I came to believe much of what he said, and tried futilely to change."
"I could not do it yet, I could not send my thoughts out from me, but I had a knowing that would not fit into words."
"Very little worth knowing is taught by fear."
"Even the most knot-headed dog learns better from an open hand than a stick."
"No one ever gained anything by running away."
"Pleasure is too physical a word to describe what I felt. It had nothing to do with the skin or body."
"I fled myself, going deeper and deeper within, but finding only disgust and hatred for myself layered throughout my thoughts."
"He could not deny me. 'You see, bastard,' he said archly, calmly. 'I tried to tell them you were not worthy.'"
"He was as silent as if I had struck him. 'That’s another thing I don’t know,' he said at last."
"It was warmth and light, too, and it grew stronger and stronger as I tried to find its source."
"I doubted much that your father would have laid down beside a woman that was a 'scrub.'"
"But the wind was unseasonably warm, and I felt the fresh air clearing my head."
"Prettiness is not all that important in a woman."
"Now, that’s a bit of beauty that will live on long after her hair grays or her cheeks wrinkle."
"You’d be wasted on them. They wouldn’t have the wit to understand you, or the heart to appreciate you."
"If I had said at that moment, 'I would,' I think her heart would have tumbled into my awkward hands like ripe fruit from a tree."
"As predators, they were more devoid of decency and mercy than any wild animal could be."
"Each possibility was debated with far more political savvy and sophistication than Galen would have believed these simple soldiers capable of commanding."
"I had been bribed with the offer of knowledge as another man might have been bribed with coins."
"Something clicked within me, as if the key piece to a wood puzzle had suddenly slid into place."
"You are to be a coterie, not homing pigeons."
"Sometimes when I come by the shop, your hair and dress smell all of fresh herbs and I can tell you’ve been experimenting to get new perfumes for the candles."
"I had not come to terms with how I felt about her; it was as if I had not looked directly at her for fear she would vanish."