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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

“But how do you get rid of a god? Is there any religion where they teach you that? How to get your god off your back if he gets too damned obnoxious? No. All you ever get is advice on how to bribe them to leave you alone for a few minutes.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 39 (p. 403)

“Asking a storyteller not to embellish is like asking a fish to give up water.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 32 (p. 118)

“Against the years all men campaign in vain.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 80, “The Taglian Territories: In Camp” (p. 621)

“Trouble came only where I expected it, from One-Eye, whose motto is that anything not nailed down is his and anything he can pry loose isn’t nailed down.”

Glen Cook book Shadow Games

Source: Shadow Games (1989), Chapter 38, “Invaders of the Shadowlands” (p. 194)

“Like most warlords he doesn’t let reality get in the way of his doing whatever he wants to do.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 5 (p. 19)

“The road can blunt the most iron will.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 20 (p. 503)

“Old folks called the winter a harbinger of worse to come. But old folks always see today’s weather as more harsh than that of yore. Or milder. Never, never the same.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 8, “The Barrowland” (p. 482)

“I did not reflect on what my response, as Captain, would have been toward an underling with my present attitude. The Words Immortal are: That Was Different.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 141, “Taglios: Family Matters” (p. 766)

“Time is the enemy whose patience can’t be exhausted.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 12 (p. 270)

“He winced. “You’ll start a civil war.”
“Not if everybody behaves and minds his own business.”
“You don’t understand. Priests consider everything their business.””

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 29 (p. 331)

“They (i. e., the peasants) could imagine no future more grim than their past.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 86 (p. 575)

“It proved to be much farther than I had hoped. It always is when you are running away.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 15, “The Land of Unknown Shadows: The Secret Masters” (p. 422)

““We all do that. In every day life it’s called making excuses.” True, raw motives are too rough to swallow. By the time most people reach my age, they have glossed their motives so often and so well they fall completely out of touch with them.”

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 4, “Whisper” (p. 115)

“He hadn’t been religious. He’d believed that death was it. When you died you were dead, like a squished bug or drowned rat, and your immortality was in the minds of those you left behind.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 11 (p. 264)

“If I had my druthers I’d be twenty-three years old for the rest of my life. Which would last another three thousand years.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 2, “An Abode of Ravens: When the Baobhas Sang” (p. 367)

“You are a hired sword. A soldier. You should not be playing philosophical games. Not even with yourself.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 98 (p. 266)

“Death will find a way.
Even the gods must pass.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 85 (p. 574)

“He talks big about his goddess getting involved but I won’t count on that. I’ve never seen the gods actually take a hand in mortal affairs.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 51 (p. 152)

“I was learning that part of a captain’s job is to delegate. Maybe genius lies in choosing the right person for the right task.”

Glen Cook book Shadow Games

Source: Shadow Games (1989), Chapter 31, “Taglios: a Boot-Camp City” (p. 165)

“Something he had heard some wise man say. About the three stages of empire, the three generations. First came the conquerors, unstoppable in war. Then came the administrators, who bound it all together into one apparently unshakable, immortal edifice. Then came the wasters, who knew no responsibility and squandered the capital of their inheritance upon whims and vices. And fell to other conquerors.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 58 (p. 629)

“All men are born condemned, so the wise say. All suckle the breast of Death.
All bow before that Shadow Monarch. That Lord in Shadow lifts a finger. A feather flutters to the earth. There is no reason in His song. The good go young. The wicked prosper. He is king of the Chaos Lands. His breath stills all souls.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 1, “Juniper” (p. 223; opening words)

“The Radisha kicked over a pile of books. “I’ve never felt so powerless. I don’t like the feeling.”
Smoke shrugged. “Welcome to the world where the rest of us live.””

Glen Cook book Shadow Games

Source: Shadow Games (1989), Chapter 29, “Smoke’s Hideout” (p. 153)

“Bomanz sighed. A man couldn’t get five minutes alone. What the hell did he get married for? Why did any man? You spent the rest of your life doing hard time, doing what other people wanted, not what you wanted.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 10, “Bomanz’s Story” (p. 491)

““I don’t get the Kina story. If she died back at the beginning of the world, how could she be giving us trouble for the last twenty or thirty years?”
“It’s religion, dimwit,” Goblin barked. “It don’t got to make sense.””

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 15 (pp. 68-69)

“You know you’re getting old when everything aggravates you.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 10, “Bomanz’s Story” (p. 491)

“This is what happens when you get old. You start thinking. Worse, you start telling everybody what you think.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 10, “An Abode of Ravens: Recovery” (p. 397)

“Bomanz could not get away from the bird, who, if he had been human, would have hung out in taverns masquerading as the world’s foremost authority, armed with an uninformed and ready opinion on every conceivable subject. His cheerful bigotry and who-cares ignorance drove the old man’s temper to its limit.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 21 (pp. 506-507)

“The only exercise I get is jumping to conclusions.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 39, “A Guest at Charm” (p. 622)

“No religion I ever encountered made any sense. None are consistent. Most gods are megalomaniacs and paranoid psychotics by their worshipers’ description. I don’t see how they could survive their own insanity. But it’s not impossible that human beings are incapable of interpreting a power so much greater than themselves. Maybe religions are twisted and perverted shadows of truth. Maybe there are forces which shape the world. I myself have never understood why, in a universe so vast, a god would care about something so trivial as worship or human destiny.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 39, “A Guest at Charm” (pp. 624-625)

“They worship the goddess, Mistress. They think. But their heresies are revolting. They are worse than disbelief.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Why was he incensed? A prolonged exchange failed to illuminate me. No godless person can comprehend those minute distinctions in doctrine that provide true believers excuse for mayhem. It is hard enough to accept the fact that they really believe the nonsense of their faiths. I always wonder if they are pulling my leg with a straight face.
Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 58 (pp. 414-415)

“We all do that. In every day life it’s called making excuses.”

Glen Cook The Black Company

True, raw motives are too rough to swallow. By the time most people reach my age, they have glossed their motives so often and so well they fall completely out of touch with them.
Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 4, “Whisper” (p. 115)

“My apprentices were exasperating. They were competing to see who was laziest.”

Glen Cook

Source: Short Fiction, Bone Eaters (2015), p. 230

“I do hope that karma is the keystone of the universe—even if I have to come back as a banana slug myself.”

Glen Cook

Source: Short Fiction, Bone Eaters (2015), p. 230

“Literacy is sorcery itself in the hinterland.”

Glen Cook

Source: Short Fiction, Bone Eaters (2015), p. 229