Scott Lynch

“‘Commonly thought,’ you say? Many things are commonly thought, but perhaps not commonly thought all the way through.”

“You needed a bath,“ Jean interrupted. “You were covered in self-pity.“

When you’re a priest, people tend to see the robe rather than the man.

As for history, we are living in its ruins. And as for biographies, we are living with the consequences of all the decisions ever made in them. I tend not to read them for pleasure. It‘s not unlike carefully scrutinizing the map when one has already reached the destination.

The trouble with creating military dictators, Locke reflected, was getting rid of them after the immediate crisis was past.

I can’t live forever. Each time something like this affair lands in my lap, I suddenly recall that I don’t want to live forever.

It had the expression common to all kittens, that of a tyrant in the becoming.

You’re ten pints of crazy in a one-pint glass.

Enlightenment! When it comes, it comes like a brick to the head, doesn’t it?

Time went by with all the speed of a sleepless night.

It was strange, how readily authority could be conjured with nothing but a bit of strutting jackassery.

There’s no freedom quite like the freedom of being constantly underestimated.