Broken Empire Quotes

Take a rest and the world catches up with you. Lesson in life - keep moving. ~ Mark Lawrence

Clarity of vision is a thing much prized. I find when you turn that clear sight upon yourself - and see through to the truth behind your own actions - it might be better to be blind. ~ Mark Lawrence

Do you know why the leaves change colour, Makin?" They did look spectacular. The forest had grown around us as we traveled and the canopy burned with colour, from deepest red to flame orange, an autumn fire spreading in defiance of the rain.
"I don't know," he said, "Why do they change?"
"Before a tree sheds a leaf it pumps it full of all the poison it can't rid itself of otherwise. That red there - that's a man's skin blotching with burst veins after an assassin spikes his last meal with roto-weed. The poison spreading through him before he dies. ~ Mark Lawrence

A time of terror comes. A dark time. The graves continue to open and the Dead King prepares to sail.But the world holds worse things than dead men. A dark time comes. ~ Mark Lawrence

She had been willing to yield everything to save Terrasen, to save all of them. He could do nothing less. Aelin certainly had more to lose. A mate and husband who loved her. A court who'd follow her into hell. A kingdom long awaiting her return.
All he had was an unmarked grave for a healer no one would remember, a broken empire, and a shattered castle. ~ Sarah J. Maas

There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. ~ Mark Lawrence

I held to my anger, drank from my well of poison. These things are not good things, but at least they're mine. ~ Mark Lawrence

The pain became my enemy. More than the Count Renar, more than my father's bartering with lives he should have held more precious than crown, or glory, or Jesu on the cross. ~ Mark Lawrence

Dark times call for dark choices. Choose me. ~ Mark Lawrence

When pain bites, men bargain. Boys too. We twist and turn, we plead and beg, we offer our tormentor what he wants so that the hurting will stop. And when there is no torturer to placate, no hooded man with hot irons and tongs, just a burn you can't escape, we bargain with God, or ourselves, depending on the size of our egos ... Take the pain, I said, and I will be a good man. Or if not that, a better man. We all become weasels with enough hurt on us. But I think a small part of it was more than that. A small part was the terrible two-edged sword called experience, cutting away at the cruel child I was, carving out whatever man might yet to come. I promised a better one. Thought I have been known to lie. ~ Mark Lawrence

When you're in a dark place, and your light is going to run out before too long, you get on with things. It's a wonder to me how few people apply that same logic to their lives. ~ Mark Lawrence

We twist and turn, we plead and beg, we offer our tormentor what he wants so that the hurting will stop. And when there is no torturer to placate, no hooded man with hot irons and tongs, just a burn you can't escape, we bargain with God, or ourselves, depending on the size of our egos. I made mock of the dying at Mabberton and now their ghosts watched me burn. Take the pain, I said, and I will be a good man. Or if not that, a better man. We all become weasels with enough hurt on us. But I thing a small part of it was more than that. A small part was that terrible two-edged sword called experience, cutting away at the cruel child I was, carving out whatever man might be yet to come. I promised a better one. Though I have been known to lie. ~ Mark Lawrence

I think maybe we die every day. Maybe we're born new each dawn, a little changed, a little further on our own road. When enough days stand between you and the person you were, you're strangers. Maybe that's what growing up is. Maybe I have grown up. ~ Mark Lawrence

The perfumes of lords and ladies tickled at my nose: lavender and orange oil. On the road, shit has the decency to stink. ~ Mark Lawrence

It's the silence that scares me. It's the blank page on which I can write my own fears. ~ Mark Lawrence

And in the moments of rest, when we orphans faced each other, mud-cheeked, leaning on our forks, there's a camaraderie that builds without you knowing it. ~ Mark Lawrence

I kissed her cheek then, because I feared to do it and though commonsense may occasionally bind me, I'll be fucked if fear will. ~ Mark Lawrence

As a child there's a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one ... each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment. ~ Mark Lawrence

The knife felt like hot iron in my fist. I hated myself for what I was going to do, and just as much for hesitating. I hated myself for the weakness in me. ~ Mark Lawrence

I knew myself broken, to burn over every refusal, to feel my blood rise at the slightest provocation, but knowing and fixing are different things. ~ Mark Lawrence

Pretty armour doesn't make a warrior. ~ Mark Lawrence

Every good story tells at least one lie and holds a secret at its heart. ~ Mark Lawrence, Road Brothers: Tales From The Broken Empire

We rode in silence for a while and I wondered if men were the world's leaves. If as we aged the world filled us with its poisons so as old men, filled to the brim with the bitterest gall, we could fall into hell and take it all with us. Perhaps without death the world would choke on its own evils. ~ Mark Lawrence

It's an irony of our times that men seeking peace must make war. ~ Mark Lawrence

Brother Row you could trust to make a long shot with a short bow. You could trust him to come out of a knife fight with somebody else's blood on his shirt. You could trust him to lie, to cheat, to steal, and to watch your back. You couldn't trust his eyes though. He had kind eyes, and you couldn't trust them. ~ Mark Lawrence

I wondered once if Corion had put that sickness in me, if I were the tool and he the architect of that violence and cruelty. I wondered if having taken his head, if having grown from boy to man, I would be a better person. I wondered if I might be the man the Nuban wanted me to be, the man Tutor Lundist hoped for. ~ Mark Lawrence

But now I thought of Father, and it felt good to know I could still feel fear. ~ Mark Lawrence

I took the Nuban's bow. I didn't trust the midget to be able to run down any thieves, and besides, I might want to shoot a circus clown or two. Just for laughs. ~ Mark Lawrence

In the end it seems we're just toys, easy to break and hard to mend. ~ Mark Lawrence

We can't be trapped by fear. Lives lived within such walls are just slower deaths. ~ Mark Lawrence

Go fuck yourself,' I said. I kept it pleasant. ~ Mark Lawrence

All men will dig their heels in if pushed enough. All men will reach the point that they say "no" for no reason other than opposition, for no reason other than the word fits their mouth, and tastes as good as it sounds. ~ Mark Lawrence

Men who are certain of everything - well perhaps they're not men at all. ~ Mark Lawrence

When I started the 'Broken Empire' trilogy, I thought it was a short story, and I didn't know the beginning, middle, or end of even that. ~ Mark Lawrence

Call it a personal foible. Some people are scared of spiders. I'm scared of immolation. Also spiders. ~ Mark Lawrence

Nothing can be cut away. Even the worst of our memories is part of the foundation that keeps us in the world. ~ Mark Lawrence

One has to imagine the impact of Paddy on an old count from eastern Europe, barely able to live off his much-diminished lands and keep the roof on a house stocked with paintings and furniture that harked back to better days. His children might take a certain pride in their ancient lineage, but they also made it clear that the world had moved on and they planned to move with it. Then a scruffy young Englishman with a rucksack turns up on the doorstep, recommended by a friend. he is polite, cheerful, and cannot hear enough about the family history. He pores over the books and albums in the library, and asks a thousand questions about the princely rulers, dynastic marriages, wars and revolts and waves of migration that shaped this part of the world. He wants to hear about the family portraits too, and begs the Count to remember the songs the peasants used to sing when he was a child. Instead of feeling like a useless fragment of a broken empire, the Count is transformed. This young Englishman has made him realize that he is part of living history, a link in an unbroken chain going back to Charlemagne and beyond. ~ Artemis Cooper

If you must run, have something to run toward, so it feels less like cowardice. ~ Mark Lawrence

We came to woodlands, with leaves unfurling on every branch, as if one blow of spring's green hammer had set them exploding from the bud. ~ Mark Lawrence

I kept my voice calm. It wasn't hard, I was calm. Anger carries less horror with it, men understand anger. It promises resolution; maybe bloody resolution, but swift. ~ Mark Lawrence

But I respected his instincts as a killer and I liked the honesty of the man. And who was I to judge? I'd F'ed a necromancer and killed a Pope within the space of a week. ~ Mark Lawrence

What made my loss, my pain, any more important than everyone else's. ~ Mark Lawrence

I would shake the world until its teeth rattled if that was required to have it spit out an answer. ~ Mark Lawrence

But words are only words and they seldom turn a person from their path unless they want to be turned. ~ Mark Lawrence

They say that time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. ~ Mark Lawrence

Tell me this," I said. "My world. It's not like the one I read about in the oldest books. When they talk about magic, about ghosts, it's as if they are fairy-tales to frighten children. And yet I have seen the dead walk, seen a boy bring fire with just a thought."
Fexler frowned as if considering how to explain. "Think of reality as a ship whose course is set, whose wheel is locked in place by universal constants. Our greatest achievement, and downfall, was to turn that wheel, just a fraction. The role of the observer was always important - we discovered that. If a tree falls in the wood and no one hears it, then it is both standing and not standing. The cat is both alive and dead."
"Who mentioned a fecking cat? ~ Mark Lawrence

Perhaps I just wanted to know what it was that I wanted. Maybe that is all that growing up means. ~ Mark Lawrence

When I wrote this song I felt pretty unoriginal because everybody writes love songs, and everybody feels like their love is the most important and when their love ends and they get their heart broken, that nobody understands. And ... that's ridiculous, but so am I. ~ Tegan Quin

Where I lived - winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,
to break the ice. My broken heart -
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.
She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,
In bare feet, bringing all spring's flowers
to her mother's house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,
the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Sometimes you arrive in a place, not where you want to be, but where you need to be - Konjic ~ Rehan Khan

Quite soon my office was a jumble of broken bits of rocks, and needles, and old monographs, all coated in fine, limy dust. I still work in an identical office today. Tidy people's eyes go all peculiar when they come into it. I have a special small padded seat for them to collapse into. ~ Richard Fortey

He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken. ~ Haruki Murakami

Stop trying to fix your body. It was never broken. ~ Eve Ensler

It's only fair that I break you," Smoke groans, seating himself fully inside me. He looks me in the eyes. "Since you've already broken me. ~ T.M. Frazier

I like things that are kind of falling apart," he admitted to another interviewer. "[Because] I come from a broken home, I guess. I like things that have been ignored or need to be put back together. ~ Barney Hoskyns

The heart may be broken, and the soul remain unshaken. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

We been on the road for 18 hours ... I need a bath, some chow ... and then you and me sit down, and we talk about who dies,eh? ~ Al Capone

The wind swoops over the tenements on Orchard Street, where some of those starry-eyed dreams have died and yet other dreams are being born into squalor and poverty, an uphill climb. It gives a slap to the laundry stretched on lines between tenements, over dirty, broken streets where, even at this hour, hungry children scour the bins for food. The wind has existed forever. It has seen much in this country of dreams and soap ads, old horrors and bloodshed. It has played mute witness to its burning witches, and has walked along a Trail of Tears; it has seen the slave ships release their human cargo, blinking and afraid, into the ports, their only possession a grief they can never lose. ~ Libba Bray

Maybe broken hearts can mend more easily than broken hands and eyes ~ Lisa McMann

If ever I create a website, I'll call it Two-Face Book, and I'll invite everyone to it, it will be a game board, of a whitewash chalkboard.
A social network, with reserved intentions, where we can fall into our cliques and circle of friends. We can dis who we want and accept who appeals to our discretion. Where the users will keep abusing, and abusers keep using, where the computer bullies will keep swinging and the J-birds that fly by will die; where the lonely will keep seeking and the needy still go desperate, where the envious will keep hating, and the lustful will keep flashing. Where those that think ignoring, will keep one down and the wannabes will foolishly think themselves greater by the number of "likes" that pours caffeine into their coffee. We can jump on the bandwagon of likes, or reserve not to show we care. Where the scorners, scammers and stalkers lay wait to take hold of the innocent and fragile, and my pockets will get fatter as more and more will join up, where being fake is accepted. As a mirror that stares at a different face. It will be my two-face epilogue, in a 3-world dimension, of a twofold war. I will build an empire of contagious hooks, and still we will live, happily-ever disastrous. ~ Anthony Liccione

Don't make any promises that you can't keep ~ Ann Marie Aguilar

They had slept in the shelter of the ruins, though neither of them really got true rest. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Jesus didn't say, 'Blessed are those who care for the poor.' He said, 'Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken.' It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself. ~ Henri Nouwen

I never realized how empty my life had really become until I had him in it. He did that to me. He said I wrecked him, but he completely destroyed me. Everything was fine when I was alone. When I didn't have to feel or think or care about someone else. Sure I was sad and broken, but I was okay. Now, I'm anything but. ~ A. Zavarelli

To all the broken-hearted and anyone feeling sad, may your hearts heal and may you feel happy in your lives.Flutter as the butterflies do. ~ Krystal

Trading old broken mirrors that feed lies into our souls for new mirrors of freedom requires choices. ~ Danielle Bernock

But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral of physical government of the world. ~ Edward Gibbon

Hope is like a candle burning within my heart. It flickers and wanes, but please don't blow it out - Gurkan ~ Rehan Khan

She knew now that everyone had heartbreak in their life at some point. What had happened didn't make her special or unusual. It was part of being human. A broken heart was, after all, the source material of myriad books. Some of those books had become her comfort, and had made her realize she was not alone. ~ Veronica Henry

The seal of Reason, made impregnable:
_ The seal of Truth, immeasurably splendid:
The seal of Brotherhood, man's miracle:
_ The seal of Peace, and Wisdom heaven-descended:
The seal of Bitterness, cast down to Hell:
_ The seal of Love, secure, not-to-be-rended:
The seventh seal, Equality: that, broken,
God sets His thunder and earthquake for a token. ~ Aleister Crowley

Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.
Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Glistening liquid pooled in two spots. Matthew was trying to clean it up, but his hands were shaking, his jaw working. I grabbed some towels from the linen closet and knelt beside him.
"I have this," I whispered.
Matthew sat back, lifting his head and closing his eyes. He let out a staggered breath. "This should've never happened."
Tear built in my eyes as I sopped up what was left of Adam. "I know."
They are all like my children. Now I've lost another, and for what? It doesn't make sense." His shoulders shook. "It never makes sense."
"I'm sorry." Wetness gathered on my cheeks, and I wiped at my face with my shoulder. "His is my fault. He was trying to protect me."
…. "It's not just your fault Katy. This was a world you stumbled into, one filled with treachery and greed. You weren't prepared for it. Neither are any of them."
I lifted my head, blinking back tears. "I trusted Blake when I should've trusted Daemon. I let this happen."
Matthew twisted toward me, grasping my cheeks. "You cannot take on the full responsibility for this. You didn't make the choices Blake did. You didn't force his hand."
I choked on a broken sob as grief tore through me. His words didn't ease the guilt, and he knew it. Then the strangest thing happened. He pulled me into his arms, and I broke. Sobs raked my entire body. I pressed my head against his shoulder, my body shaking his, or maybe he was crying for his loss, too. Time passed, and it became New Yea ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Success by its very nature demands a period of overcoming, a process by which we become strong in broken places. ~ Dennis Kimbro

And that is why a dog can go to the vet and have a really big operation and have metal pins sticking out of its leg but if it sees a cat it forgets that it has pins sticking out of its leg and chases after the cat. But when a person has an operation it has a picture in its head of the hurt carrying on for months and months. And it has a picture of all the stitches in its leg and the broken bone and the pins and even if it sees a bus it has to catch it doesn't run because it has a picture in its head of the bones crunching together and the stitches breaking and even more pain. ~ Mark Haddon

A thought no less than a thing, an idea equally with an empire, is resolved into a complex of infinitely extensive relations between infinitesimally small parts. ~ Sangharakshita

I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet. ~ Hugo Chavez

In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

NOT ONLY WAS THE weather miserable, with frequent rains and mists, Britain was also not worth having. The phenomenal expansion of the Roman Empire was driven by what Tacitus called the pretium victoriae, the 'wages of victory' or how much wealth could be extracted from the defeated by the conquerors. A sodden landscape, half-hidden by cloud, producing nothing more exciting than cattle, corn and a few substandard pearls, the place was thought simply incapable of delivering a decent return on all that outlay of men, materials and money. Roman commentators dismissed a conquest of Britain as making no sort of economic sense. ~ Alistair Moffat

Being gay, the last time I looked, had nothing to do with reading a balance book, fixing a broken bone or changing a spark plug. ~ William J. Clinton

The bond forged between us was not one that could be broken by absence, distance, or time. And no matter how much more special or beautiful or brilliant or perfect than me he might be, he was as irreversibly altered as I was. As I would always belong to him, so would he always be mine. ~ Stephenie Meyer

after you've pulled off the tablecloth with
the full plates of food
and broken the windows
and rung the bells of
idiots
and have
spoken true and terrible
words
and have
chased the mob through the
doorway-
then comes the great and
peaceful moment: sitting alone
and
pouring that quiet drink.

the world is better without
them.

only the plants and the animals are
true comrades.

I drink to them and with
them.

they wait as I fill their
glasses. ~ Charles Bukowski

The Empire was on the point of turning Paris into the bawdy house of Europe. The gang of fortune-seekers who had succeeded in stealing a throne required a reign of adventures, shady transactions, sold consciences, bought women, and rampant drunkenness. ~ Emile Zola

He looks at me then, and suddenly I know that people are what you truly need to be afraid of. People with eyes that communicate. People who can hurt you so hard you'd wish you were never born. ~ Tarryn Fisher

I was the kind of reader in smudged pink harlequin glasses sitting on the cool, dusty floor of the Arrandale public library, standing at the edge of the playground, having broken a tooth in dodge ball, and lying under my covers with a flashlight. ~ Amy Bloom

In the Ottoman Empire,' she began, 'the camel traders have stopping places along their trade routes called caravanserai. Sometimes they are hundreds of miles apart, over desert or mountain range, but they travel safe in the knowledge that there will be a place where they can shelter and find succour at the end of their journey. Even if they have never been that way before, they are sure that there will be such a place; that sooner or later, they will find a caravanserai.' Annibale sat forward, interested. ' How do they know?' 'They do not know. They have faith. 'He sat back again. 'I think Annibale did too. That is why my mother named me so.' She could see that it cost him to talk of her. 'She liked the story. She said no one could know what lay beyond today, but you had to hope, and be brave, and trust that all would be well. ~ Marina Fiorato

Love is not the way you think, Jade Moon. Your heart is not full or broken all at once. Pieces heal and break and heal again. ~ Anonymous

One of the symptoms of having a broken-heart is the fact that even ghosts will give up on the hope of scaring you as you have already lived through your worst fear. ~ Faraaz Kazi

Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from gun violence. Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage. All these things still matter to hardworking families; they are still the right thing to do; and I will not let up until they get done. ~ Barack Obama