Prince Of Thorns Quotes
"War, my friends, is a thing of beauty. Those as says otherwise are losing."
"Strange, it's killing that gives me a thirst."
"Some people are born to rub you the wrong way. Brother Gemt was born to rub the world the wrong way."
"You can only win the game when you understand that it is a game."
"It's the silence that scares me. It's the blank page on which I can write my own fears."
"Every brotherhood has a pecking order. With brothers like mine you don’t want to be at the bottom of that order."
"Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him lose them all."
"Knife-work is a dirty business, yet Brother Grumlow is always clean."
"Assassination is just murder with a touch more precision. Brother Sim is precise."
"Men fight for their homeland, Prince. It’s the land they defend. The King and the land."
"Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak."
"It’s a poison men take willingly, knowing it will make them weak."
"If the time comes to sacrifice these fields in the cause of victory, I’ll let them burn in a heartbeat."
"We are defined by our enemies—but also we can choose them. Make an enemy of hatred, Jorg. Do that and you could be a great man, but more importantly, maybe a happy one."
"The way to break the cycle is to kill every single one of the bastards that fucked you over. Every last one of them. Kill them all. Kill their mothers, kill their brothers, kill their children, kill their dog."
"I did," I said. "I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t have stabbed him under."
"I’ll go alone. That man will die screaming, by my hand." Cold fury crawled across my skin.
"There's a time and place for taking offence."
"Soft words and rose water may please the gentry, but those that fight the war live dirty."
"No bath. It's about time for a little road-stink at court."
"The news stole ahead of us, until each town presented a larger and better prepared reception."
"If peasants had reached Rike, we'd have had red slaughter."
"Why would the gods care what happens to a child who doesn't care about himself?"
"You're a fool to make a fist at the gods, boy."
"You think there's a man we left behind who could tell the Criers what we look like?"
"I've learned to wear my face as a mask, and generally I can write what I choose on it."
"Sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war."
"There's more pride in that than in what true family I have left."
"Strength requires sacrifice. All weakness carries its cost."
"If someone sought to steer me, I would know it."
"And if I knew it... Oh, if I knew it, I would teach such a lesson in pain that the Red Men of the East themselves would come to learn new tricks."
"I killed his son. I stuck a knife in Marclos, Renar’s flesh and heir."
"Pray I don’t find you here on my return, pagan."
"An angry boy? The dead saw a darker hand upon your heart."
"We’re many, and you’re one, my lady. And a damned ugly one at that. So you’d best step aside and let us past."
"There is no evil, Makin. There’s the love of things, power, comfort, sex, and there’s what men are willing to do to satisfy those lusts."
"Die! A man should at least know how to stay dead!"
"I laughed to show them what I cared for their threat. I laughed to hurt them."
"A heat came off the boy, as if a fire banked inside him had woken."
"We skim across surfaces, heedless of the depths below. Dragonflies flitting over a lake, miles deep, pursuing erratic paths to pointless ends."
"No sin is too great to repent. There’s no evil that cannot be put aside."
"Pride is a sin too, Jorg. Deadliest of the Seven. You have to let it go."
"Let the meek have their inheritance—I’d rather have eternity in shadows than divine bliss at the price you ask."
"The things you know, the secrets you hold. Even the secrets you’ve forgotten."
"Nations won’t follow monsters like me. They’ll follow a lineage, divine right, the spawn of kings."
"Let the wilds temper you, and if you weather it, in time the prodigal will return, a viper to his father’s bosom. Pawn takes king."
"Turn your vengeance anywhere you choose, share it with the world, spill some blood; but never return to these lands."
"In the end it’s about staying power. They should put that on headstones, ‘Got tired.’"
"Cowards should be treated with respect. Cowards best know how to hurt. Corner one at your peril."
"The right clothes could take Brother Sim from a boy too young to shave to a man too old to be allowed to."
"I killed Price here," I said. "Outside this inn."
"I’ve grown a bit since we last met," I said. "Sageous didn’t find me so easy."
"It’s not the done thing to set to bloody slaughter at tourney."
"It’s will. In the end it always comes down to will."