Glen Cook: Quotes about time

Glen Cook is American fiction writer. Explore interesting quotes on time.
Glen Cook: 410 quotes3 likes

“Morning is wonderful. Its only drawback is that it comes at such an inconvenient time of day.”

Glen Cook book Sweet Silver Blues

Source: Sweet Silver Blues

“There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronizing wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 2, “The Plain of Fear” (p. 456)
Context: An old, tired man. That is what I am. What became of the old fire, drive, ambition? There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronizing wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.

“I’m an incurable romantic. The essence of romance is an unshakable conviction that next time will be different.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 135, “Taglios: The Mad Season” (p. 747)

“Only this time it was just a brief rest, till the stars came out. They stared down with mockery in their twinkles, saying all our sweat and blood really had no meaning in the long eye of time. Nothing we did would be recalled a thousand years from now.
Such thoughts infected us all. No one had any ideals or glory-lust left. We just wanted to get somewhere, lie down, and forget the war.
The war would not forget us.”

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 5, “Harden” (p. 140)

“Though it might wear a thousand different names in a thousand different times, and might come from a thousand different directions, darkness always comes.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 69 (p. 517)

“Time is the most wicked of all villains.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 5 (p. 25)

“Like most villains, he was wicked only most of the time and mainly in small-minded ways.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 7 (p. 34)

“Every time I see a mirror I’m amazed. I end up wondering who’s taken over the outside of me. A disgusting old goat, from the look of him. The kind I used to snicker at when I was twenty. He scares me, Stance. He looks like a dying man. I’m trapped inside him, and I’m not ready to go.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 10, “Bomanz’s Story” (p. 497)

“Good morning. I’m honored but I’m also pressed for time. If you have something to discuss please get to the point. I’m an hour behind schedule and didn’t budget time for socializing.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 27 (p. 323)

“Seemed to have made peace with the bad times. Some manage that with comparative ease. Others remain crippled for life. Those are not the sort who remain soldiers. They become ex-soldiers and get intimate with wine or poppies.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 131, “Around Taglios: Aerial Recon” (p. 736)

“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)

“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)

“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)

““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)

“Time has a way of blunting the sharpest edge of determination.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 55 (p. 466)

“I must be driven. I figured that as long as I had to stay out there I ought to keep scouting around. Working in my sleep. Ought to have the Old Man double my pay. How much is two times a stab in the back?”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 70 (p. 523)

““When you get back to Taglios now, Master, you can establish a mighty reputation by explaining the myths in the words of a being who lived through their creation.”
Santaraksita smiled sourly, “You know better, Dorabee. Mythology is one area where nobody wants to know the absolute truth because time has forged great symbols from raw materials supplied by ancient events. Prosaic distortions of fact metamorphose into perceived truths of the soul.”
He had a point. In religion, precise truth has almost no currency. True believers will kill and destroy to defend their inaccurate beliefs.
And that is a truth upon which you can rely.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 97 (pp. 351-352)

“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)