Brent Weeks Quotes

Desperate men fight best.

Let me tell you what I learned in the Hole. I learned that in suffering, we find the true measure of our strength. I learned that a man can be a coward one day and a hero the next. I learned that I'm not as good a man as I thought I was. But the most important thing is this: I learned that though it costs me dearly, I can change. I learned what has been broken can be made new. Do you know who taught me that? A prostitute. In a bitter woman who made her living in shame, I found honor, courage, and loyalty. She inspired me and she saved me. -Logan

In suffering, we find the true measure of our strength.

Her nudity is her armor. It blinded the drooling fools. They couldn't see anything else while they saw her body.

Everyone thinks they're special. It's what makes lying so easy.

I shall return, it vowed. I shall return.

I think that fiction is an excellent place for us to struggle with questions of good and evil, and humanity and inhumanity.

But after you know a man or a woman like that - after you wear their skin and walk a few miles in it, you can't help but love them -

We've all heard the stories. It's just that some people don't want to believe them. 'He shall rise from the green' doesn't have to mean coming from the Blood Forest or Ruthgar. It could mean he starts out drafting green. One of the first glimmers of Breaker's magical genius showed whyen he went green golem in the Battle of Garriston - he'd never even heard of going green golem. He intuited it on the spot. His will was so strong, he drafted a green that stopped musket balls, Teia. 'He shall kill gods and kings'? He already done both. 'He'll be an outsider'? How much more outsider can you be than a mixed-blood bastard from Tyrea? Each of those things offend the luxiats, and all of them together make their blood boil - as it makes them furious that a Lightbringer would be necessary to put their worship right - but hasn't Orholam's work always offended those in power? I won't put myself on the wrong side of Orholam. 'In the darkest hour, when the abominations come the sores of Big Jasper, when Hope himself has died, then shall he bring the holy light and banish darkness.' 'Hope himself,' Teia. That's Gavin Guile. He's dead. our darkest hour is coming. We have to pick a side.

King: "You're ... you're shit! You shitting, shitting shit!"
"Your Majesty," Durzo said gravely. "A man of your stature's cursing vocabulary ought to extend beyond a tedious reiteration of the excreta that fills the void between his ears.

Light cannot be chained.

The perfect killer has no conscience.

Drafting green from a thousand trees shining on each bank of the river in the noonday sun, he threw down steps and made a little platform to stand on. "We", he declared, "are damaged but not dismayed, oppressed but no overwhelmed. We are the Broken, for when our oaths were tested, we broke them ourselves. We were despised: Here are my best friends. This world sees a bastard, an orphan, a hostage, a cripple, an idiot. I call them the Mighty. We - you - are outcasts all, the homeless driven from the lands where our mothers were buried. They have taken the light from our lives. Killed our loved ones, our friends. Taken our homes. Left us to wander as ghosts and feral dogs." [...]

[...]"They have taken the light from us. Yes. But now they expect us to cower like dogs beaten and fade like shades forgotten. But I don't see dogs and shades here. Do they not know what they've begun? I see wolves. I see ghosts..."

He looked around them as if they had forgotten who they were, and he was here to hold up a mirror for them that they might remember.

"Have you forgotten? Have they made you, for this brief houyr, forget? Ghosts and Wolves hunt at night. They thin we cower, waiting for the light? Alone we are broken, bereaved, afraid. together we will hunt. In the darkness, we will usher them into the final darkness. Alone we were weak and frightened. That time is past. Together, today, we are the Nightbringers.

They made it so that we can't change it from within. They made it so we must kill to break it. If we be monsters, we're monsters made in their image.

Every community is a gull gliding over a sea of spite, eager for carrion, all too ready to steal, and all too quick to squawk when stolen from.

Elene gasped and sat up. "Kylar Thaddeus Stern!"
Kylar giggled. "Thaddeus? That's a good one. I knew a Thaddeus once."
"So did I. He was a blind idiot."
"Really?" Kylar said, his eyes dancing. "The one I knew was famous for his gigantic-"
"Kylar!" Elene interrupted, motioning toward Uly.
"His gigantic what?" Uly asked.
"Now you did it." Elene said, "His gigantic what, Kyler?"
"Feet. And you know what they say about big feet." He winked lasciviously at Elene.
"What?" Uly asked.
"Big Shoes," Kylar said.

I don't ask you to like reality. I only ask you to be strong enough to face it.

Sometimes lies are most necessary with our friends.

Pacifism is a virtue indistinguishable from cowardice.

Bring me his head when they're finished. But before you give him to the sodomites, cut his cock off and bring me his sack for a purse. I want him to bleed to death as they fuck him.

Dangerous knowledge is often hidden under ponderous grammar and obscurantist vocabulary.

You'll fight. You'll die. And I'll miss you.

Our home is gone, but come home,

I've taken lives, and I've taken my own life in my hands and trusted a friend with it. Yes, sir, I'd say that makes me a man."
"Neither makes you a man. The first makes you a killer. The second makes you a fool. Either may get you killed.

Come, the Devil's Highway awaits.

We're finished, God. From now on, you answer your own fucking prayers.

Perhaps great men are content with marrying a woman who is not their equal, but we great women ... Our equals are rare enough in the first place, and then most of those we do find have married twits.

To realize in an instant that you aren't going to have the life you'd hoped for, but not waste a moment complaining, instead acting instantly to save what good you can? That's more guts than I'd have had.

There is only one question: Does what you do, every day, have meaning? Acaelus had thought his actions did, once. For centuries, he'd put his faith in Jorsin Alkestes. A long dead king. A madman who'd sworn he would return. Even from death. A madman who'd left madness everywhere in his wake.

Maybe when you were born on the top of the mountain you could pretend the mountain didn't matter, but those who climbed it and those born at its base who could never climb at all knew differently.

The perfect killer has no identity.

Great men are not so selfless.

The duke sounded like he was trying to convince himself. "Have you ever done this before?"
"Set up someone by pretending to be someone else? Sure. Pretended to get killed? Not so much.

Yes," Elene said, missing or deciding to miss the sarcasm. "Kylar thinks ... Kylar fears that he's a man born to be forever alone. He thinks the last couple of months has been him cheating fate. He's not a man born to be alone, Vi, but some lies take a long time to heal.

We each tend to think of our time as the end product of all that has come before, which is true, but we like to believe our time is therefore the pinnacle, rather than another pearl on the string.

Not all shame comes from wrong doing and not all hiding comes from moral failure.

When you have lived either a very short time or a very long time - if you've lived well - you will be able to love easily, too. Broken hearts have fresh places to bond with new faces.

Hope is the great deceiver. Hope is the piper who leads us sleepy to our slaughter.

But emptiness can't be threatened. Emptiness holds nothing dear. Emptiness knows no fear.

It's better that the innocent should live than that the guilty die

Dying well is easy,it only takes a moment of courage. It's living well that I couldn't do. What's death compared to that.

A man's face is the surface of a pond, reflecting the sky, reflecting the trees, reflecting whatever is the object of his gaze and his love, the reflection hiding his depths. But when the wave passes, in the swell, for an instant, you can see what lies beneath the waters.

Kylar, in the crucible of tragedy, explanations fail. When you stand before a tragedy and tell yourself that there is no sense to it, doesn't your heart break? I think that must be as hard for you as it is for me when I scream at God and demand to know why - and he says nothing. We will both survive this, Kylar. The difference is, on the other side I will have hope.

That they have learned to weep at war is no victory. That they know loss is no gain.

In this life, we are not garments which may be washed and worn again, Karris. We are candles, giving light and heat until we are consumed. You burned more brightly than most. It has a cost. Mediocrities like me? Dim flames burn longer.

It wasn't just hunger[ ... ] Hunger wasn't comfortable, but it was familiar and it was nothing to fear. This was a thirst, like his whole body was parched, drying up, about to crumple. He was dying of thirst on the shores of the world's biggest lake.
None of it was for him. To him, that lake was an ocean. It was salt sea that if he drank would make him thirstier and thirstier until he went mad and died.

Ashes. Ashes, and blood, and nothing more.

The intuition that had kept Kylar from Vi even from the first time she'd tried to seduce him at the Drake estate suddenly crystallized: You don't share your life with a woman's body, you share your life with a woman.

What happens if you do nothing, nothing, there's a price and a terrible freedom to that

You may have won, Cenaria was saying, but your victory is no triumph. You can force me from my home, but you will not live in it. I will leave you nothing but scorched earth.

Telling a story is like trying to eat grapes with a fork. It's always trying to get away from you. And if you're a good author, and you've challenged yourself, and you're telling big stories, there's more and more that's trying to get away from you simultaneously.

I was a bad child. Fortunately, I've come a long way since then. Now I'm a bad man.

Remember that time you tried to hump the bridge?

Survivors are willing to make sacrifices.

You will not draft here," she said.
"I'll decide that," Gavin said.
Instead of looking irritated, she smiled. "It is as foretold."
Seers. Excellent. "Someone foretold that I'd say that?" Gavin asked.
"No, that you'd be an asshole.

But mercy ceases to be a virtue when it enables further injustice.

When you know a man's secrets, you have power over him. A man's secret is his weakness. Every man has a weakness, no matter ...

I am simply competent ... Not a leader except when leadership is lacking.

My name is Marissia Pullawr. The White was my grandmother. You were my assignment. I was never a slave.

And what more could a man hope for but to conquer death?

After years of knowing her, a woman's beauty shouldn't be able to reach straight into a man's chest and squeeze the breath out of him. Especially not when he could never have her.

Why is it, my shadow-striding friend, that we don't fear dreams? We lose consciousness, lose control, things happen with no apparent logic and abiding by no apparent rules ... We don't fear dreams, but we do fear madness, and death terrifies us.

Politics is ethics writ large.

People like you don't come to us; they just feel frustrated by life, like they're supposed to be something more than they are, but they can never break through.

A whimsical choice, perhaps a dangerous choice, but a shadow should bear some resemblance to the shape that cast it.

I am of you," said Kip."I am Guile as much as you are. True, I have a scrap of decency, but only a scrap. How do you think you can treat a Guile with such disregard and get away with it? Because I am you. I'm as cold as you, I'm as smart as you, and when you push me, I'm as evil and cruel as you. I have a thin film of goodness floating on the top of my Guile, grandfather, but I don't know how senile you must be to miss just how thin it is.

Messy emotional issues could wait until later, or never.

Power is any action that results in consequences. But real power is action that results in the intended consequences.

The truth was, Azoth hated Azoth. Azoth was a coward, passive, weak, afraid, disloyal. Azoth had hesitated. Master Blint didn't know it, but the poisons on the needle had killed Azoth. He was Kylar now, and Kylar would be everything Azoth hadn't dared to be.

I'm going to explain this to you in terms you can understand: shut up.

This is why there are few prophets. We end up dead a lot. The truth is offensive to men who love darkness.

You got potential, Kip.
And you know what potential means? he replied.
Ain't done nothing yet.

You were broken years ago and you healed hunched. And now you're broken again and trying to heal even more hunched.

Just when a man makes a decision that everything he's believed his whole life is a lie, something comes along tempting him to believe again.

Sometimes duty required a man to do things he would do almost anything to avoid.

Attack dolphins. What the hell was that? Dolphins were supposed to be nice.

This man," Dorian said, poking Kylar's chest, "and this one - " he poked Kylar's forehead - "are on their way to madness. Take it from one who knows.

Freedom isn't the highest good. Power is. For without power, your freedom can be taken.

Your Majesty," Durzo said gravely. "A man of your stature's cursing vocabulary ought to extend beyond a tedious reiteration of the excreta that fills the void between his ears." - Durzo Blint

Never tempt a man beyond what he can endure.

We all make choises,and then we bear the consequences for those.

Analogies are lies grown-ups tell." "Why?

Charm is less effective on people who have good reason to kick your ass

Sometimes a seer could be a pain in the ass? Try always.

**A Dedication from Brent Weeks to his older Brother**
For Kevin, because it's a big brother's job to make a little brother tough. What you taught me, I've needed. (But I never have been right since that dirt clod incident.)

What do you call it when you realize you've been an asshole your whole life?" Gavin asked.
"A good start?" Orholam offered.

The only life you have the right to sacrifice for the greater good is your own.

Guile! Brother! If we pull this off, we'll be legends!"

Gavin sighed. "Gunner… we're already legends.

Why am I attracted to her butt? How weird is that? Why do men like butts anyway?

I am Sa'kagé a lord of shadows. I claim the shadows that the Shadow may not. I am the strong arm of deliverance. I am Shadowstrider. I am the Scales of Justice. I am He-Who-Guards-Unseen. I am Shadowslayer. I am Nameless. The coranti shall not go unpunished. My way is hard but I serve unbroken. In ignobility nobility. In shame honor. In darkness light. I will do justice and love mercy. Until the king returns I shall not lay my burden down."

--(Durzo Blint to Jorses Alkestes, quoted to Skylar at the edge of Ezra's Forest.)

Feir said, "All we have to do is find Ezra's secret entrance to Black Barrow, find Ezra's workshop and his gold tools, find seven broken mistarille swords, rediscover a forging technique every present-day Maker's day Mays is a myth, find one giant ruby, and avoid detection by a couple of hundred Vürdmeisters plotting gods know what."

"Oh," Antoninus said, waggling his great, single kohled eyebrow, "here I thought it was going to take all winter.

My writing has a lot of surprising twists.

With no small amount of swagger, Gavin Greyling said, "I remember Gavin fucking Guile, who won the False Prism's War, who outwitted the Thorn Conspirators and ended the Red Cliff Uprising. Gavin Guile, who brought low pirate kings and bandit lords, who ended the Blood Wars with wits and one deadly wave of his hand, who brought justice to the Seven Satrapies. Gavin Guile, who hunted wights and criminals, who built Brightwater Wall in less than a week, who aborted the birth of gods, destroyed at least two bane, and killed a god full fledged at Ruic Head. Gavin Guile, who faced a sea demon and lived, saving all the people of Garriston and the Blackguard, too. Gavin Guile, who sank Pash vecchio's great ship Gargantua with a rat. Gavin Guile, who armed us for war and gave the Blackguard the seas entire with ou sea chariots and hull wreckers. Gavin Guile, heart of our heart, our Promachos, the one who goes before us in war, who came and conquered and will come again.

Relationships are ropes. Love is a noose. - Durzo Blint

Let me make this real simple. You will not break me. The hole will not break me. I will not break. I will not be broken.

This is what it is to grow up. It is to live beyond the blind rush of passion, or hate, or green luxin, or battle juice. It is to see what must be done, and to do it, without feeling a great desire or a great hatred or a great love. It is to confront fear, naked. No armor of bombast or machismo. Just duty, and love for one's fellows. Not love felt, not the love that compelled action without thought, but love chosen deliberately. I am the best person to do this thing, it said, though I may die doing it.

By what right do I bend men to my will? Or is there no right, only ability?

Embrace the shadows ... Breathe the silence ... Be ordinary, be invisible ... Mark the man ... Know every out ...

Growing old with the woman I love would be my first choice, but dying reconciled with her isn't a bad second.

When you deal with human beings, never count on logic or consistency.