quotes-from-the-bookery

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

"Don’t you dare tell me to go!” Anna roars. “You think I’m going to let you die here? After you shot my boyfriend? After you did this shit to my mom? Fuck you! You owe me! You don’t get to die!”

“Serendura,” Ssrin says, heads looking at one another, laughing in her own khai way, “I’ll go to hell.”

“Hell can’t have you until I’m through!”

#exordia #seth dickinson #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

“You paid me because I worked for you,” I say, matching Gisele’s chill. “And you worked me to the bone for pennies, so I couldn’t afford to leave.”

#little thieves #margaret owen #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

“I think I get it now,” I announce with an air of discovery. “You’re what happens when an encyclopedia wishes on a star to be a real boy, if that encyclopedia was also an absolute prick.”

#little thieves #margaret owen #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

"The dagger flashed its light, illuminating the landscape to the heavens. The darkness vanished. And so did the dragon.

You switched it off, hesitating to place it back in its sheath. Good thing. The dragon was instantly back again, larger and fiercer than before.

Backing off, you attempted the same move again. Foolishly. The result was no different. As long as the dagger emitted its photons, the dragon was gone. As soon as it switched off, the dragon was immediately back.

“They found light sitting in a room,” you heard the voice of your Coach echoing in your mind. “Light, would you like to meet darkness?”

#heaven exposed #The Tzaddik and the Dragon of Darkness II #tzvi freeman #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

"Until the dragon reaches Eden, it is still a dragon.”

#heaven exposed #The Tzaddik and the Dragon of Darkness II #tzvi freeman #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

“Everyone dies, little Prince. Everyone. But if we die to make tomorrow better, it’s worth it! That’s what I say to the ruins of Kutulbha. That’s what I say to Abdu’s dead mother. That’s what I tell myself, when my guilt runs up my throat and fills my nose.”

#the tyrant baru cormorant #baru cormorant #the masquerade #seth dickinson #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

"That aside, out of curiosity,” the Red Mage smirked, “has that speech ever actually worked?”

The Black Queen breathed out, and in a moment she went from tired girl only a few years older than them to razor-sharp killer. It was in the eyes, in the way she held herself. She had the poise of someone used to taking lives.

“No,” she said. “But I’ll try with the next batch anyway. Sixth time’s the charm, right?”

"You’ve seen I’m prepared,” Catherine Foundling said. “You’ve seen I have the muscle to put you down. But I didn’t put on the fancy hat to kill kids. So please, I beg you – don’t make me.”

#practical guide to evil #pgte #erraticerrata #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

Find someone who loves you the way my girlfriend pushes me off a cliff. Without hesitation. With full confidence in your abilities, with the rocksteady belief that your relationship can handle it, and with complete faith that when you come out of the water, assuming you survive, you will totally forgive them for the push. Almost certainly forgive them. Probably.

Bonus points if you find someone with enough chutzpah to say Bon voyage while they do it.

#percy jackon and the olympians #chalice of the gods #rick riordan #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

"Why?”

She turned, met pale brown eyes with golden ones. Because you are my past made man, she thought. There is no pit in Creation deep enough I could bury you in it. Because I loved a girl as a sister, once. I murdered her, and a thousand other sisters since. Where does it end? If no one kills me, where does it end?

“Why not?” the Doom of Liesse replied.

#practical guide to evil #pgte #erraticerrata #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

"Last year,” I said, “I crushed the skull of a man who thought he was a visionary. He wanted to save Callow, he insisted. Thing is, I don’t really believe you can save people anymore. I tried that and it doesn’t ever quite seem to work right. I think it’s because it doesn’t matter, if they worship at the House of Light or sacrifice at some dark altar – most days they’re just people, and those are the same everywhere. They till the same fields, pay the same taxes, marry their neighbours and die fat if they’re lucky enough."

“Named are more,” Archer said. “We’re the brighter flame: the people who can actually change things.”

“Are we?” I smiled. “The part of the Conquest you pay attention to is the Calamities sweeping all opposition aside. You think that’s because they were mighty, but that’s not the part that matters. They were figureheads, enablers. Praes won because it had grown as a nation while Callow had not.”

“The Empire grew because villains made it grow,” she replied flatly.

“And don’t you think it’s telling the most successful villains since Triumphant put their efforts into reforming institutions rather than building a bunch of flying fortresses?” I asked. “People won that war, not Named. Malicia and Black, they’re brilliant – but there’s been a lot of brilliant Named over the centuries, on both sides. What makes those two different is that they know change comes from the bottom, not the top.”

“That’s…” she hesitated.

Heresy, she wanted to say. That it went against everything we knew. History was forged by the hands of those that stood out and crowned themselves with power, those precious few even the Gods recognized as apart from the masses. Except that’s a lie. A thousand Dread Emperors and a thousand Kings, but nothing ever changed – until what lay behind them did. It’s not the tip of the blade that kills, it’s the force that drove it into your belly. That was, I was beginning to grasp, what I’d done wrong in Callow. I’d fought to put all the authority in my hands with the vague notion that I could fix it all afterwards, but how was that any different from what the Lone Swordsman had been doing? There were people all over the Empire who could make things better, if they were allowed to. And if there were forces trying to stand in the way? Well, I was a villain. The parts of Creation I did not like, I would break.

“Right now I have an enemy in Liesse who thinks by sheer will and ruthlessness she’ll drag Praes back to a golden age that never existed,” I said. “I’m not worried about her, deep down, because even if she claims I’m the one going against the grain she’s the one fighting the tide.”

I broke off a piece of turnover and popped it into my mouth.

“Last spring, a little boy gave an orc a crown of flowers. There’s something beyond any of us happening in the Empire, right now,” I said. “Malicia and Black think they control it, but I don’t think they do. They’re watching the story when what’s important is the people telling it. They want me to part of the machine they’re built, but I don’t think that’s my role.”

“Then what is?” Archer asked quietly.

“When heroes and villains come knocking in the name of fate,” I spoke, tone calm and measured. “When they try to drag us back to where we were by force with a Choir behind them or the host of some howling Hell – I’ll kill them all. Every last one of them.”

Softly, Archer laughed.

“Ah, Foundling,” she murmured. “I was wrong about you – you’re not boring at all. You’re just as mad as the rest of us.”

I looked up at the sky. Night was dying.

“Drink up, Archer,” I said. “Dawn’s coming and we have a god to rob blind.”

#practical guide to evil #pgte #erraticerrata #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

“A man like Musser, left with no good way to get what he wants, will not give up what he wanted,” Rook intoned. “He will give up ‘good’.”

#pale #otherverse #wildbow #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

“So I did,” Akua murmured. “I made a decision. A nudge, righting a wrong left to fester.”

She paused, meeting my gaze.

“What now, Catherine?”

Am I a prisoner on a longer leash, those golden eyes for the second time, or am I what you say I am? I breathed out shallowly. I’d made the decision already, I realized. I’d made it years ago.

“Then I trust your judgement,” I said.

Was it grief I saw in there, or love? Or perhaps what I was most afraid of – that, when it came to the two of us, there might not be much of a difference between the two. I looked away. The question burned, but this was not the hour for it.

#practical guide to evil #pgte #erraticerrata #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

“Other Firstborn seem to be avoiding the area,” Masego noted. “We should continue down this street, it will quicken our pace and lessen the risks.”

Throat tight, I nodded. Grim as the logic was, it wasn’t untrue. But before we could move, there was an interruption.

“We need,” Akua Sahelian quietly said, “to free them.”

I felt the weight of those golden eyes on me without needing to turn. My heart clenched. The calculus was plain to see, as it so often was at times like this. If we freed them, the enemy would know we’d been here. Maybe not immediately, but sooner than otherwise. And if we got caught, were forced to retreat or fight our way out before getting to the tower, it might be a lot more than three hundred drow that died for it. And on the other side of the balance was a hard truth: if we did not save these people, they were dead. And we would condemn them to that fate simply because of a risk, a potential danger. Not a certain consequence.

I knew the choice I would have made if I’d come alone. Knew it deeply, instantly. And some part of me recoiled at the thought of how very comfortable with sacrifices I had become.

“Masego?” I asked.

“So long as the spell is not too powerful, I can maintain the Mirrors through it,” Hierophant said.

He did not seem particularly concerned with the moral question to wrestle with, I thought. Indifference, or was he simply trusting me to wrestle with it for him? Sometimes it was hard to tell.

“I have had enough of shackles, Catherine,” Akua murmured. “Especially those made of iron.”

I studied her face. She had already made her decision, I realized. She would free the dzulu whatever I said. And so I shivered, knowing in that moment that I had both succeeded beyond my wildest hopes and entirely lost control of the situation. So I said the only thing I could say.

“We must be quick,” I replied, “and then cut through the Rozhan territory in a straight line.”

It wasn’t even that difficult, when it came down to it. The shackles had been made to resist Night, not sorcery, and so Akua sent a spell shivering down the nine chains one after another that simply popped the shackles open. The dzulu milled about uncertainly, some even fearfully. Thinking it might be a trap. But when one of them hesitantly tried to leave and nothing struck it down, there were excited shouts and within moments they were scattering in every direction. We waited until our path was clear, then ran for the Rozhan grounds to the east.

I could not see Akua’s face, but somehow I knew she was smiling.

#practical guide to evil #pgte #erraticerrata #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

"The first time I met you two,” I said, “I killed you both."

“Good times,” Evil twin grinned.

“The second time,” I continued, “I left you behind.”

“And the demon broke you,” the other spirit replied.

Mistakes, I thought. Both times it’d been mistakes. And I’d never seen them with the Beast.

“It’s the end of the road, you know,” I quietly said. “There won’t be another one after this.”

Neither of them answered. Their gazes were on me.

“It’s the third time,” I said. “Let’s make it count.”

I breathed out, looking up at the moon through the parted clouds, and let myself loosen. Stopped trying to trick my way out of this, to win it, to use it as a tool. It was a journey, nothing more and nothing less. A hand gripped my right shoulder.

“Do better,” she whispered into my ear. “Remember the girl who wanted to save her home. She was always the best of you.”

A hand gripped my left shoulder.

“Don’t flinch,” she whispered into my ear. “Remember the girl who wanted to be the storm. She’s the one who got you here.”

We stood the three of us under the moon, in the heart of broken Hainaut, as below us the corpses began moved. Not as a horde but as one, a behemoth of a creature rising from the cradle of death made of a hundred thousand corpses. It stood tall and terrible, blotting out the sky, watching me through a sea of dead faces.

“Hello, old friend,” I softly greeted the Beast.

It opened a gaping maw, baring fangs made of broken swords and spears and banners. It was a beast, I thought, fit to swallow the world whole. West and East, what did it matter? It would devour it all.

“I once told you I wasn’t afraid of you,” I smiled. “But it was a lie. Did you know?”

It laughed, the sound a thing of horror.

“Let me tell you again, then,” I said. “I’m not afraid of you.”

The behemoth of corpses climbed out of the pit, standing over me. An entire world of death enveloped me on all sides. I cocked my head to the side.

“Is it a lie now?” I asked it.

Its massive head lowered and it watched me, suddenly snapping out. I did not flinch.

“You know what we are now,” I told it. “Who we are.”

I looked up into its eyes.

“The Warden,” I claimed, and the world shivered with the truth of it.

The Beast roared in approval. Time to wake up, I thought, and the great maw of death opened wide.

I never felt it close around me.

#practical guide to evil #pgte #erraticerrata #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

For, most of all, he was a bored sergeant on a warm Wasteland night, catching his first glimpse in the eyes of a stranger of the girl who’d topple empires and feeling his blood burn.

He was the Adjutant, and Catherine Foundling was returning.

If any stood between them they would be broken, sure as dawn and dusk and the death of men.

#practical guide to evil #pgte #erraticerrata #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

Tariq’s mouth opened to a ragged gasp, and within the depths of Liesse death was cheated for the third time at my hand.

"Time to rise, pilgrim of grey,” I murmured. “There’s still work to be done.”

#the practical guide to evil #practical guide to evil #pgte #erraticerrata #quotes

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

"These are the lives we live, Catherine,” he gently said. “We kill and we win until we lose and we die. We are the children of the knife."

#practical guide to evil #pgte #erraticerrata #quotes