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Glen Cook Quotes
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Glen Charles Cook is a contemporary American science fiction and fantasy writer, best known for The Black Company and Garrett P.I. fantasy series.

✵ 9. July 1944
Glen Cook photo
Glen Cook: 205 quotes3 likes

Glen Cook Quotes

“I have always found the religious tolerance of the southerners amazing and disconcerting, though it was really only an ancient habit predicated on the fact that no religious community was strong enough to show the rest the errors in their thinking at swordspoint.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 60 (p. 481)

“Ignorance is a chink in the armor a knowledgeable enemy can exploit at will.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 54 (p. 462)

“She—and I—were of an age now where we spent too much time wondering how things might have gone had we made a few different choices.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 38, “The Taglian Territories: The Dandha Presh” (p. 502)

“Fools can make an omen of anything in retrospect.”

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 1, “Legate” (p. 11)

“I did not expect them to try anything but I am alive at my age because I make a habit of being ready for trouble when it seems most unlikely.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 33, “Khatovar: Leave-taking” (p. 488)

“This soiree must have been so big that if held today, we’d call it a war. Or at least a riot. On and on. So-and-so of such-and-such, with Lady Who’s-is, sixteen titles, four of which made sense. By the time the heralds finished proclaiming everyone, the party must have died of encroaching senility.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 43, “Picnic” (p. 643)

““That your solution to everything? Cut somebody’s throat?”
“Always slows them down.””

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 10 (p. 258)

“The world sure isn’t kind to the man who tries to be gentle and thoughtful.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 40 (p. 113)

“I felt wonderfully wicked. I always do when I frustrate overly powerful, responsible-to-no-one types who think all existence was created only for their pleasure and exploitation.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 48, “The Shadowgate: The Warlords of the Air” (p. 530)

“Though not as bad as most, he was going through that stage where he knew everything worth knowing and nothing his elders said—particularly if it bore any vaguely education hue—was worth hearing. He could not help that. It went with the age.
And I was my age and could not help saying things I knew would do no good.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 4 (p. 18)

“I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled toward absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks.”

Glen Cook book Shadow Games

Source: Shadow Games (1989), Chapter 5, “Chains of Empire” (p. 30)

“A sign of advancing age. You start obsessing about how much you have to get done in the time that you have left.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 43, “The Taglian Shadowlands: The Shadowgate” (p. 514)

“He was a lawyer before he worked his way up to pimping.”

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 1, “Legate” (p. 23)

“Ever since childhood I have suspected you get along better if you respect people’s ways and wishes regardless of your apparent relative strengths.
That doesn’t mean you let people walk on you. It doesn’t mean you eat their pain for them. You need to demand respect for yourself, too.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 25 (p. 67)

“I sped a prayer heavenward. God needs to be reminded.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 75 (p. 265)

“Fickle folk. A little hunger and stress and they forgot all about liberty.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 71 (p. 197)

““I’ve been on my own before, Mather.” And I hadn’t been happy a moment. But happiness is a fleeting creature. It’s no birthright. Not anything I expect but something I accept when I tumble into it. Meantime, power will do nicely.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 14 (p. 276)

“It is not necessarily for mercenary soldiers to know what is going on. It is sufficient for them to do the job for which they have taken the gold. That had been drummed into me from the moment I enlisted. There is neither right nor wrong, neither good nor evil, only our side and theirs. The honor of the company lies within, directed one brother toward another. Without, honor lies only in keeping faith with the sponsor.”

Glen Cook book Shadow Games

Source: Shadow Games (1989), Chapter 28, “Back to Scouting” (p. 148)

“Suvrin had a little too much of the politician in him. Too much of the kind of mind willing to let an individual go so the rest will not be inconvenienced.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 139, “Taglios: The Great General” (p. 762)

“The list of cities lost was long and disheartening, even granting exaggeration by the reporters. Soldiers defeated always overestimate the strength of their foe. That soothes egos suspecting their own inferiority.”

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 5, “Harden” (p. 160)

“She is not one to disdain truth indefinitely only because it is unpleasant.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 42, “Homecoming” (p. 639)

“I don’t think she told any lies. She just forgot to tell the whole truth.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 10 (p. 263)

“There were too many secret things going on. And too many perfectly banal, openmouthed evils driven by ambition or fanaticism distracting everyone from the creeping apocalypse.”

Glen Cook

Source: Lord of the Silent Kingdom (2007), Chapter 20 (pp. 518)

““We’re still the Black Company. We still don’t leave our own behind.” Which was never strictly true but you do have to serve an ideal the best you can, lest it become debased. A law as ancient as coinage itself says bad money will drive out good. The same is true of principles, ethics and rules of conduct. If you always do the easier thing, then you cannot possible remain steadfast when it becomes necessary to take a difficult stand. You must do what you know to be right. And you do know. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you do know and you are just making excuses because the right thing is so hard, or just inconvenient.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 72 (pp. 255-256)

“She had a full measure of youth’s indifference to the past.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 79, “The Taglian Territories: In Motion” (p. 620)

“A teacher?”
“Yes. He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That what we are determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which here is no escape simply by being ourselves and interacting with other selves.”
“Interesting.”
“Well. Yes. There is god of sorts, Croaker. Do you know? Not a mover and shaker, though. Simply a negator. An ender of tales. He has a hunger that cannot be sated. The universe itself will slide down his maw.”
“Death?”
“I do not want to die, Croaker. All that I am shrieks against the unrighteousness of death. All that I am, was, and probably will be, is shaped by my passion to evade the end of me.” She laughed quietly, but there was a thread of hysteria there. She gestured, indicating the shadowed killing ground below. “I would have built a world in which I was safe. And the cornerstone of my citadel would have been death.”
The end of the dream was drawing close. I could not imagine a world without me in it, either. And the inner me was outraged. Is outraged. I have no trouble imagining someone becoming obsessed with escaping death.
“I understand.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

“Maybe. We’re all equals at the dark gate, no? The sands run for us all. Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!”
Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 39, “A Guest at Charm” (p. 625)

“You might have noticed that the human animal is fond of forming and clinging to prejudices, remaining their steadfast curator in the face of all reason and contradiction.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 42 (p. 155)

“Bomanz had lived his lies so long he often lied to himself.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 7, “The Second Letter” (p. 476)

“The light overcame the shadow. But as always, the shadow left its taint on the victors.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 43, “Picnic” (p. 645)

“How to argue with sociopathic reasoning? Lisa was the heart of Lisa’s universe. Other people existed only to be exploited.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 29, “Juniper: Payoff” (p. 346)

“Smeds did not like it. It was getting complicated. He did not like things complicated. Trying to untangle them usually made things worse.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 28 (p. 541)

“His problem is, he gets an idea in his head and he can’t get it out if it’s wrong, no matter what evidence you hit him with.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 55 (p. 405)

“Blade muttered, “Makes as much sense as the story of any other god. Meaning it don’t.””

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 10 (p. 261)

“Are lovers ever honest?”

Glen Cook book Shadow Games

Source: Shadow Games (1989), Chapter 5, “Chains of Empire” (p. 31)

“That was not supposed to happen. It was unthinkable, supposedly. And for ordinary people that was mostly true. But not so at a level where men began to believe that they existed outside the usual rules.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 28 (pp. 107-108)

“Rage is a red, near-animate force, as bloated with compassion as a starving serpent.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 101 (p. 270)

“I grinned. “The unwritten law of all armies, Captain. The lower ranks have the privilege of questioning the sanity and competence of their commanders. It’s the mortar holding an army together.””

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 5, “Harden” (p. 138)

“Cruel, cruel tricks of the Adversary. I had been gifted with a mind that wanted to explore, to find out, to know. And I had been gifted with faith. And now I had been gifted with information that put fact and faith into conflict. I had not been gifted with a priest’s slippery dexterity when it came to reconciling the philosophically irreconcilable.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 96 (p. 348)

“My arguments were beginning to sound a little strained to me, too. I was in the position of a priest trying to sell religion.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 32, “Juniper: Visitors” (p. 365)

“I told her I could not believe in her movement because it did not promise anything for the future except freedom from the tyranny of the past. I told her that what little philosophy I’d detected driving the movement totally ignored human nature. That if the Rebels ever did manage to topple the empire, whatever replaced it would be worse. That was the lesson of history. New regimes, to make sure they survived, were always nastier than the ones before them.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 36 (p. 561)

“Krage eyed us from a face of stone. “I help you with something, Inquisitor?”
“Probably not. You’d lie to me if the truth would save your soul, you bloodsucker.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere. What do you want, you parasite?”
Tough boy, this Krage. Struck from the same mold as Bullock, but he had drifted into a socially less honored profession. Not much to choose between them I thought. Priest and moneylender.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 14, “Juniper: Duretile” (p. 283)

““Can you read?”
I nodded.
“Rules are posted over there. You got two choices. Obey them. Or be dead.””

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 28, “To the Barrowland” (p. 576)

“We are all the sum total of our pasts, good and evil.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 95 (p. 614)

“The essence of sorcery, even for its nonfraudulent practitioners, is misdirection.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 8, “Tally Close-Up” (p. 243)

“It looks like it fell out of the ugly tree and hit every single branch on the way down.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 10, “An Abode of Ravens: Recovery” (p. 396)

“There was one temporal power greater than the greatest sorcery. Greed.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 23, “Glittering Stone: Fortress with No Name” (p. 448)

“It is a chance to flit off and double-check my memory, which I have found to be astonishingly unreliable.
Apparently none of us really remember anything exactly the way it happened. And often the divergence is proportional to the amount of ego and wishful thinking we have invested.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 90 (p. 243)

“And there is no time. There is a war on.
Always there is a war on.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 1 (pp. 9-10)

“Those soldiers hacked and slashed. Their faces were distorted with the horror of their actions but they were out of control, far past the point where they could stop. The flicker of firelight made everything seem more hellish and surreal.
I had seen this before. I had seen my own brothers this way, a few times, back in the north. The blood smell takes control and kills the mind and deadens the soul and there is nothing human left.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 71 (p. 197)

“But, no. It was too late. Fortune’s die was cast. The cruel game had to be played to its end, no matter what anyone wanted.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 104, “Taglios: View from the Protector’s Windows” (p. 676)