The Swords of Night and Day

All legends have a base in fact.

In my experience all women deserve someone better.

It is the curse of absolute power, Olek. There is no one to admonish you, no laws save those you make. We like to believe there is something special, even alien, about evil. We like to think that tyrants are different from the rest of us. That they are somehow inhuman. They are not. They are merely unchained, unfettered; free to do as they please.

"No golden age to discover now," he whispered. "No end to disease and starvation. No, bright sparkling cities reaching the clouds ... All that I have lived for is gone now. I am so tired."

"Then think on this, priest: You stopped the Eternal from finding greater weapons. Your actions here have led to her death. The world is free again."

"Free? Of one tyrant perhaps. You think there will be no others?"

"No, I do not. But I know there will always be men to stand against them. You grieve because of a pure magic lost. That magic was corrupted by evil. This is how evil thrives. We find an herb that cures disease, and someone will make a poison from it. We forge iron to make a better plow, and someone will make a sharper sword. There can be no power that evil will not corrupt."

Winning is not everything, Stavut. Men like to think it is. Sometimes it is more important to stand against evil than to worry about beating it ... Evil will always have the worst weapons. Evil will gather the greatest armies. They will burn, and plunder, and kill. But that's not the worst of it. They will try to make us believe that the only way to destroy them is to become like them. That is the true vileness of evil. It is contagious.

We all of us carry the seed of evil in our hearts and souls ... Even the purest, even the most holy. It is part of the human condition, born in us. We cannot root it out. All that we can do — at best — is to prevent it from germinating.

Plan for the worst, expect the best.

We like to think of life as a constant ... Yet it can be ended in a heartbeat."

It is a merchant's nature to quibble over coins. It is how we become rich and buy satin shirts. The problems of who governs this area is one for another day.

"Why am I taking seduction advice from a man whose idea of foreplay is to slam coins on the table and shout: 'Who wants to ride the big horse?'"

"Because he knows best, Tinker."

"What I did understand from the rebirth process was that the rebirth reproduced a physical duplicate of the original. But this is my point. It is physical. What truly makes a man who he is? Is it the strength of his arms, or the courage of his soul? You have your own soul, Harad. You are not Druss. Live your own life."

"A lovers' spat," he said. "You know how it is. Boy meets girl, girl wants boy dead. An everyday story, really."

Self-preservation is a paramount desire in all of us. Good and evil are interchangeable. When the wolves pull down a fawn I don't doubt the doe would consider it an evil act. For the wolves it is a necessity, and they would see the arrival of fresh meat as good.

We are closest to life when we are vying with death ... The blood runs hot, the air smells sweet, the sky becomes an unbearably beautiful blue. Battle is intoxicating. That is why the ghastly vileness of war has always been so popular.