Tad Williams Quotes
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A king’s son has nothing but inferiors, each one a potential assassin.
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To fight a war, you must believe it can accomplish something. We fight this one to save John’s kingdom, or perhaps even to save all of mankind...but isn’t that what we always think? That all wars are useless-except the one we’re fighting now?
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'Now, boy, now...' he said bewilderedly, 'what is all this talk of glory? Have you caught the sickness, too? Curse me for a blind beggar, I should have seen. This fever has cankered even your simple heart, hasn’t it, Simon? I’m sorry. It takes a strong will or practiced eye to see through the glitter to the rotten core.'
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People in science fiction flicks always seemed to know useful things about the places time travel took them. But what if the time traveler had been only an average history student? What then?
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The last thing a drunkard loses, you see, is his cunning: it outlasts his soul by a long season.
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'In my experience,' he said with more than a touch of bitterness, 'the gods do not seem to care much what their servants deserve-or at least the rewards they give are too subtle for my understanding.'
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Simple answers to life’s questioning. That would be a magic beyond any I have ever been seeing.
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'You have something that might be more use to me than either gold or power-something that in fact brings both in its train.''And what is that?'The count leaned forward. 'Knowledge.'
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Thank you for your news, Princess. It is none of it happy, but only a fool desires cheerful ignorance and I try not to be a fool. That is my heaviest burden.
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Tiamak closed his eyes to make a short prayer of thanks, hoping that the gods, like children, could be confirmed in good behavior by praise.
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Sometimes you men are like lizards, sunning on the stones of a crumbled house, thinking: 'what a nice basking-spot someone built for me.'
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Ambitious men never believe others aren’t the same.
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If you have not noticed, we are preparing for war. I’m sorry if that inconveniences you.
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'Sharp it away, lad, sharp it away,' the burly guardsman said, making the blade skitter across the whetstone, 'lest otherways ye’ll be a girl afore ye’re a man.'
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'It would please me your not being obsequious. That is a trait of marketplace people who are selling shoddy goods. I am sure to prefer endless, stupid questions to that.''Ob...obseek...?''Obsequious. Flattering with oiliness. It is not liked by me. In Yiqanuc we say: ‘Send the man with the oily tongue to go and lick the snowshoes.’'
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No charm is proof against a dagger in the back.
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She realized now that she knew little about people outside the courts of Nabban and Erkynland, although she had always thought herself a shrewd judge of humanity. However, it was a larger and much more complicated world on the other side of the castle walls than she had ever suspected.
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She had little doubt that whatever happened to her on this drifting ship was of scant interest to a God who could allow her to reach this sorry state in the first place.
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'Do you get tired, singing?' she asked.Gan Itai laughed quietly. 'Does a mother grow tired raising her children? Of course, but it is what I do.'
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Empires were like seawalls, he thought sadly, even those which embodied the best of hopes. The tide of chaos beat at them, and as soon as no one was shoring up the stones any more...
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Part of manhood, I am thinking, is to ponder one’s words before opening one’s mouth.
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If God is all-powerful, then the Devil must be nothing more than a darkness in the mind of God. But if the Devil is something real and separate, than perfection is impossible, and there can be no God... except for the aspirations of fallen angels.
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So we face our final hours...and all that was once certain has become uncertain. Except for defeat. That, as always, is the end of all our stories.
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He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.