27
" No.” A look of dawning comprehension. “Ah, that. The regret, is that what you’re talking about? This sense of loss? Yes, he always talked about that, too. It’s a mortal thing, as far as I can tell. The aspect storm is a warp in the fabric of every possible outcome the universe will allow. It gathers in the alternatives like a bride gathering in her gown. For a mortal, those alternatives are mostly paths they’ll never take, things they’ll never do. At some level, the organism seems to know that. "
― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)
30
" ...you and I will be dust and half-remembered tales before they even start to build that city. But it will come, and when it does, this sword will still be there to see it. Kiriath steel — built to harm, built to last. When all the damage it’s done and the grief it’s caused have been forgotten, even by the gods, when the Kiriath themselves have passed into discredited myth, this murderous fucking ... thing ... will hang unused, and harmless, and gaped at by children. That’s how it ends, Gil. With no one to remember, or care, or understand what this thing could do when you set it free. "
― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)
32
" It was the blue-tinged taste of a regret so deep you could never plumb its depths. It was the victory at Rajal that never came, it was his brother walking away down the long dark wood corridor, it was a life he might have had in Yhelteth if disgust and fury had not sent him away in disgrace instead. It was the slaves he could not free, the screaming women and children of Ennishmin he could not save, the piled-up, silent dead and the smashed-in, ruined homes. It was every wrong decision he'd ever made, every path he'd failed to walk, fanned out and held up for him to understand, and it hurt. "
― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)
37
" Can’t fucking believe it’s come to this,” it muttered. “Negotiating with a fucking herdsman — you know, sometimes it’s — listen, I was the thief of fire once, you goat-shagging thug. You know that? The fucking doom bringer to kings.” An arm thrown out in exasperation. “Back when the earth was young, back when there was still a moon in the fucking sky, I pulled on whatever flesh was needful and I struck terror into the hearts of the powerful and enthroned all across this mudball world, and another dozen like it. I took the spirit form and strode across measureless ... ah, fuck it, never mind. "
― Richard K. Morgan , The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1)