Tad Williams

Sometimes doing the gods’ bidding required a hardened heart.

“Do you get tired, singing?” she asked.

Gan Itai laughed quietly. “Does a mother grow tired raising her children? Of course, but it is what I do.”

She knew that life was but a long struggle against disorder, and that disorder was the inevitable winner.

To fight a war, you must believe it can accomplish something. We fight this one to save John’s kingdom, or perhaps even to save all of mankind...but isn’t that what we always think? That all wars are useless—except the one we’re fighting now?

It was easy to hate if he did not think, Simon discovered.

He wanted a home desperately. He was close to the point where he would take a mattress in Hell if the Devil would lend him a pillow.

Sometimes you men are like lizards, sunning on the stones of a crumbled house, thinking: “what a nice basking-spot someone built for me.”

You can never tell when princes will get squinty on you. You can never tell when they might suddenly feel their blood and go all royal.

In times of badness, gold is being worth more than beauty.

She didn’t know which she liked less, having people tell lies about her or having people know the truth.

The last thing a drunkard loses, you see, is his cunning: it outlasts his soul by a long season.

She had been dressed in her sky-blue gown and had been suddenly almost terrible in her completeness—so different from the ragged serving girl who had slept on his shoulder. And yet, the very same girl had been inside that blue dress.