Beyond the Gap

If they had lawyers instead of teeth, they’d be as bad as people.

From what I’ve seen, people who brag a lot are usually trying to convince themselves even more than other people.

Believe worked well enough when a man could not measure it against facts. But when he could…Facts crushed to belief like a mammoth crushing a vole.

“By God, you are a hateful man!”

“Anyone who tells you anything you don’t want to hear is a hateful man,” Hamnet answered.

If you were half as funny as think you are, you’d be twice as funny as you really are.

If barbarians recognized that they were barbarians, they wouldn’t be so barbarous any more.

What people believed often turned out to be true just because they believed it. Charlatans and mages were quick to take advantage of that.

He didn’t care what she thought, and, in not caring, he felt as if a curse were lifted from his back.

Mosquitoes laid eggs in those ponds and then rose in buzzing, biting swarms. Sometimes the clouds of them were thick enough to dim the sun. It was as if the soul of a vampire were reincarnated in a million beings instead of just one.

Hamnet Thyssen wondered if Witigis was a holy man or simply a madman. His vacant features didn’t promise much in the way of brains.

“Mammoths make me believe in God,” Trasimund said… “How could mammoths make themselves? God had to do it.”

“You could say the same thing about mosquitoes.” Eyvind Torfinn punctuated the observation by slapping. “You could even say God liked mosquitoes better than mammoths, because he made so many more of them.”

If Earl Eyvind wanted to talk nonsense, he was welcome to, as far as Hamnet was concerned.

If he wanted anyone else to take him seriously when he did…that was another story altogether.

“You believe in reincarnation, then?” Eyvind Torfinn asked eagerly. “Have you evidence to support your belief?”

A man who gets angry at the truth will have a hard time in life, don’t you think?

“Knowledge is strange,” Eyvind Torfinn said. “You never can be sure ahead of time what you may need. Someone who is going to a strange place will carry different tools on his belt. Should he not carry different tools in his head as well?”

“And do you know of opossums? Have they come this far north?”

“I have seen one or two.” Sarus made a face. “Horrible things, like big rats with pointed faces.”

“Foolishness,” Ulric Skakki said. “Everything that goes on between men and women is full of foolishness.”

Hopes were only shadows that too often vanished in the pitiless light of reality.

Women are what made me the way I am now. I do not believe the illness is also the cure.

Liv worried less about how important other people thought she was and more about things that really mattered.

Ulric Skakki’s smile was so charming, it made Hamnet distrust him on sight—as if he didn’t already.

He thought she was the most wonderful woman in the world. Of course he did—she agreed with him.

“And if you don’t bet, how do you expect to win?”

Hamnet Thyssen didn’t look at things that way. To him, not betting meant you couldn’t lose. He hadn’t even thought of winning.

“Sometimes I think I don’t know everything that’s going on,” Ulric Skakki said in tones full of mock self-pity.

Count Hamnet reached out and set a consoling hand on his arm. “Don’t worry about it. Sometimes I don’t think you know what‘s going on, either.”

And Ulric was a man of parts, no doubt about it. Just what the parts added up to…Yes, that was a different question.