Quotes from book

Toll the Hounds

“The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.”

“Now, invite me in, before I lose my temperature.’

‘Temper, you mean.’

‘No, temperature. It’s getting chilly.”

“There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail - should we fall - we will know that we have lived.”

“Necessity, now there's a word to feed every outrage on decency.”

“Do mortal fools still measure the increments leading to their deaths, wagering pleasures against costs, persisting in the delusion that deeds have value, that the world and all the gods sit in judgment over every decision made or not made?”

“The righteous will claim sole domain on judgment. The righteous are the first to make hands into fists, the first to shout down dissenters, the first to bully others into compliance.”

“I can see your reasons, my love. But won’t you get thirsty?’ — Inscription found beneath capstone of household well, Lakefront District, Darujhistan”

“Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?”

“She walked alongside him, saying nothing. Thinking. At last, she sighed. 'It is said that only one's will can fight against chaos, that no other weapons are possible.”

“Killers among your kind, among my kind, are just that — the savagery of beasts mated with intelligence, or what passes for intelligence. They dwell in a murky world, sir, confuse and fearful, stained dark with envy and malice. And in the end, they die as they lived. Frightened and alone, with every memory of power revealed as illusion, as farce.”

“History meant nothing, because the only continuity was human stupidity. Oh, there were moments of greatness, of bright deeds, but how long did the light of such glory last? From one breath to the next, aye, and no more than that. No more than that. As for the rest, kick through the bones and wreckage for they are what remain, what lasts until all turn to dust.”

“Sometimes, mortals did indeed forget. Sometimes, mortals needed … reminding.”