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The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1) QUOTES

The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1) QUOTES

1 " Potential, and the will to deploy it. That's all magic is in the end, you know. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

2 " ...the tongues of men are not much leashed by concerns for accuracy or truth. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

3 " When a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased mother has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you only have two basic options. You can smell his breath, take his pulse and check his pupils to see if he's ingested anything nasty, or you can believe him. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

4 " If you don’t know the men at your back by name, don’t be surprised if they won’t follow you into battle. On the other hand, don’t be surprised if they will, either, because there are countless other factors you must take into account. Leadership is a slippery commodity, not easily manufactured or understood. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

5 " You should have heard the boatman who brought me up here from the Glades. Fire in the northern sky, lights in the marshes, a black dog heard barking through the night. Doesn’t occur to anyone to wonder how exactly you can tell it’s a black dog just from the fucking bark it makes. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

6 " Running away just makes your arse a bigger target. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

7 " Everyone's afraid of what they don't understand," Ringil said quietly. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

8 " People are sheep, Ringil raged. Moronic fucking sheep. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

9 " From a legal point of view—” He shook his head. “Forget the law. It isn’t going to help. They’ll cite it where it suits them, ignore it where it doesn’t. They’re clerics, Archeth. They spend their whole fucking lives selectively interpreting textual authority to advantage. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

10 " Humans, short-lived and locked out of the gray places for life, do not do well with uncertainty. If they cannot have what might, what could, what should, and perhaps most awful of all what should have been, then they will dream it up instead, imagine it into being in whatever twisted or beautiful form suits, and then drive their fellows to their knees in chains by the thousand and million to pretend in chorus that it is so. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

11 " Men were like blades, they would all break sooner or later, you included. But you looked around at the men you led, and in their eyes you saw what kind of steel you had to hand, how it had been forged and tempered, what blows, if any, it would take. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

12 " Well.” Ringil gave the Throne Eternal captain another brittle little smile. “You know, the thing about fucking is, it’s a lot less wear and tear than trying to kill each other with bits of steel. And it’s the sort of thing that does tend to lead to confidences and favours if you play it right. Ask any woman, she’ll tell you that. Unless of course your experiences in that direction are limited, as, come to think of it, yours probably are, to whores and rape. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

13 " His lack of condemnatory zeal gave him a reputation in the religious hierarchy that ensured he would always remain a humble teacher in a backwater town. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

14 " And now he couldn’t cloak it any longer, the leaking sense of loss, more fucking loss, soaking through into the same old general, swirling sense of betrayal, years upon pissed-away years of it, made bitter and particular on his tongue now, as if Grace-of-Heaven had come wormwood into his mouth in those final clenched, pulsing seconds. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

15 " But I won’t watch them go to war again. I’ve been to war, you know, to save civilization from the reptile hordes. I bled for it, I saw friends and other men die for it. And then I watched men like you piss it away again, the civilization we’d saved, in squabbles over a few hundred square miles of territory and what language the people get to speak there, what color their skin and hair is and what kind of religious horseshit they get crammed down their throats. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

16 " I’ve heard that said about outlanders and enemies before, and I don’t generally trust it. Just too bloody convenient, the quick and easy way to deal with difference. Oh, they’re not like us, they’re insane. It saves you having to think too much. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

17 " Pull on the cold, clinking mail of your professional detachment, Archeth Indamaninarmal, inhabit it until it starts to feel warm and accustomed, and in time you’ll forget you’re wearing it at all. You’ll only notice when it works, when it stops you feeling the steel-edged bite of something that might otherwise have gotten through and done you some damage. And then you’ll just grin and shiver and shake off the blow, like warriors do. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

18 " Humans, short- lived and locked out of the gray places for life, do not do well with uncertainty. If they cannot have what might, what could, what should, and perhaps most awful of all what should have been, then they will dream it up instead, imagine it into being in whatever twisted or beautiful form suits, and then drive their fellows to their knees in chains by the thousand and million to pretend in chorus that it is so. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

19 " It seems lies come very easily to your race. They lie to those they lead, to their mates and fellows no matter how close- drawn, even to themselves if it will make the world around them more bearable. It is hard to know what to believe in this place.” Something "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)

20 " Ringil lifted his right hand as if it pained him, put it slowly and wonderingly up to his shoulder and touched the pommel of his sword like, well, like he was caressing someone's prick, to be honest. "

― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)