Quotes from book
The Silver Spike

The Silver Spike
Glen Cook

The Silver Spike is a spin-off novel from Glen Cook's The Black Company. The story combines elements of epic fantasy and dark fantasy as it follows two former members of The Black Company and the formerly renowned "White Rose" down their own path after parting ways with the company following the events at the conclusion of The White Rose.

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“He couldn’t handle what it meant to have somebody in love with you. Running away was the only thing he knew how to do.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 1 (p. 457)

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“Nobody had any ideas. The questions just sort of lay there like dead fish too ripe to be ignored and too big to shove out of the way.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 19 (p. 499)

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“I’ve always known people for whom a goal was everything, who never thought nothing about the consequences of the goal achieved.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 36 (p. 562)

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“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)

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“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)

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“She wasn’t satisfied with the way things turned out. What the hell can you do with women? You can give them exactly what they ask for and they’ll cuss you because that ain’t what they really want.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 38 (p. 569)

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“She did not seem offended, so I added my secret philosophy of life: any dork who became a soldier for an idea instead of the money deserved to die for his country. You’re going to put it all on the table, six up with some other guy, it damned well better be for stakes you can carry away.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 36 (p. 560)

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“He had learned self-control in a hard school. He had been married for thirty years.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 26 (p. 528)

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“Public works which did not serve the rich and powerful had a way of dying of neglect.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 66 (p. 646)

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“Raven muttered, “You don’t have to be brilliant to be a god.””

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 42 (p. 580)

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“The road can blunt the most iron will.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

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

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“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)

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“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)

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