R. Scott Bakker Quotes & Sayings

For all things there is a toll. We pay in breaths, and our purse is soon empty. — R. Scott Bakker

He no longer heard Kellhus speak so much as observed him cut and carve, whittle and hew, as though the man had somehow shattered the glass of language and fashioned knives from the pieces. — R. Scott Bakker

Beliefs are the foundation of actions. Those who believed without doubting, he would say, acted without thinking. And those who acted without thinking were enslaved. — R. Scott Bakker

He looked like a bored boy deciding whether to poke a dead fish. — R. Scott Bakker

If we're nothing more than our thoughts and passions, and if our thoughts and passions are nothing more than movements of our souls, then we are nothing more than those who move us. — R. Scott Bakker

Some events mark us so deeply that they find more force of presence in their aftermath than in their occurrence. — R. Scott Bakker

Of course he could see only blackness, such was the treachery of fire, which iluminated small circles by darkening the entire world. — R. Scott Bakker

Achamian tossed his hands skyward in dismay. Foolish boy! How many faiths are there? How many competing beliefs? And you would murder another on the slender hope that yours is somehow the only one? — R. Scott Bakker

They so wanted it to be simple, believers. "It is what is!" they cried, sneering at the possibility of other eyes, other truths, overlooking their own outrageous presumption. "It says what it says," spoken with a conviction that was itself insincerity. They ridiculed questions, for fear it would make their ignorance plain. Then they dared call themselves "open. — R. Scott Bakker

History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang. — R. Scott Bakker

And 'barbarity,' I fear, is simply a word for unfamiliarity that threatens. — R. Scott Bakker

A strange coldness had settled upon Achamian, the monolithic selfishness of which only children and madmen are sometimes capable. — R. Scott Bakker

One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten. — R. Scott Bakker

Desperation glares in all Men, but it burns as a beacon when it takes a King for tinder. A — R. Scott Bakker

When a man possesses the innocence of a child, we call him a fool.
When a child possesses the cunning of a man, we call him an abomination. As with love, knowledge has its seasons. — R. Scott Bakker

Our words always paint two portraits when we describe our families to others. Outsiders cannot but see the small peeves and follies that wrinkle our relationships with our loved ones. The claims we make in defensive certainty
that we were the one wronged, that we were the one who wanted the best
cannot but fall on skeptical ears since everyone makes the same claimsof virtue and innocence. We are always more than we want to be in the eyes of others simply because we are blind to the bulk of what we are.
...
Mimara had wanted him to see her as a victim, as a long-suffering penitent, more captive than daughter, and not as someone embittered and petulant, someone who often held others accountable for her inability to feel safe, to feel anything unpolluted by the perpetual pang of shame ...
And he loved her the more for it. — R. Scott Bakker

Everyone thinks they've won the Magical Belief Lottery. Everyone thinks they more or less have a handle on things, that they, as opposed to the billions who disagree with them, have somehow lucked into the one true belief system. — R. Scott Bakker

There's faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there's faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they're not entirely certain they're in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God's mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence. — R. Scott Bakker

Better blind in Hell than speechless in Heaven. - — R. Scott Bakker

There was nothing the ignorant prized more than the ignorance of others. — R. Scott Bakker

Though all men be equally frail before the world, the differences between them are terrifying. — R. Scott Bakker

Something ... made him feel small, not in the way of orphans or beggars or children, but in a good way. In the way of souls. — R. Scott Bakker

The arguments were assembled and were defeated. The reasons railed and railed. But love had no logic.
No more than sleep. — R. Scott Bakker

Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools. — R. Scott Bakker

Sometimes the Nonman would climb upon some wild pulpit, the mossed remains of a fallen tree, the humped back of a boulder, and paint wonders with his dark voice. Wonders and horrors both. — R. Scott Bakker

What if the choice isn't between certainties, between this faith and that, but between faith and doubt? Between renouncing the mystery and embracing it? — R. Scott Bakker

Answers are like opium: the more you imbibe, the more you need. Which is why the sober man finds solace in mystery. — R. Scott Bakker

Convince a man to take a single step - after all, what earthly difference could one step make? - and he would walk the next mile to prove himself right. — R. Scott Bakker

Above all the mighty detest change. — R. Scott Bakker

We belittle what we cannot bear. We make figments out of fundamentals, all in the name of preserving our own peculiar fancies. The best way to secure one's own deception is to accuse others of deceit. — R. Scott Bakker

To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so? — R. Scott Bakker

No soul moves alone through the world, Leweth. Our every thought stems from the thoughts of others. Our every word is but a repetition of world spoken before. Every time we listen, we allow the movements of another should to carry our own ... NO one's soul moves alone, Leweth. When one love dies, on must learn to love another. — R. Scott Bakker

That hope is little more than the premonition of regret. This is the first lesson of history. — R. Scott Bakker

To piss across water is to piss across your reflection — R. Scott Bakker

And that revelation murdered all that I once did know. Where once I asked of the God, 'Who are you?' now I ask, 'Who am I? — R. Scott Bakker

The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before? — R. Scott Bakker

For Nautzera there was no present, only the clamour of a harrowing past and the threat of a corresponding future. For Nautzera, the present had receded to a point, had become the precarious fulcrum whereby history leveraged destiny. A mere formality. — R. Scott Bakker

The world has long ceased to be the author of your anguish. — R. Scott Bakker

Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic. — R. Scott Bakker

Maithanet carried a plague whose primary symptom was certainty. How the God could be equated with the absence of hesitation was something Achamian had never understood. After all, what was the God but the mystery that burdened them all? What was hesitation but a dwelling-within this mystery? Perhaps, — R. Scott Bakker

We must speak plainly. Only honesty provides truth. Only truth delivers triumph. — R. Scott Bakker

Ignorance was ever the iron of certainty, for it was as blind to itself as sleep. It was the absence of questions that made answers absolute - not knowledge! To — R. Scott Bakker

He said ... " A pause. He cleared his throat. "He said that pity was the only love I could hope for."
He saw her swallow, blink. "Oh, Akka ... "
Of all the world, only she truly understood. Of all the world. — R. Scott Bakker

While waiting for the hidden machinery of messengers and secretaries to relay his request, Achamian wandered into an adjoining courtyard, struck by the other immensities that framed his present circumstance. Even if there were no Consult, no threat of the Second Apocalypse, he realized, nothing would be the same. Kellhus would change the world, not in the way of an Ajencis or a Triamis, but in the way of an Inri Sejenus.
This, Achamian realized, was Year One. A new age of Men. — R. Scott Bakker

Mystery made thing gigantic. Knowledge made small. — R. Scott Bakker

I remeber asking a wise man, once ... 'Why do Men fear the dark?' ... 'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visable.' 'And do Men despise ignorance?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things
all things!
but only so long as it remains invisible. — R. Scott Bakker

Darkness shields as much as it threatens. — R. Scott Bakker

The Men of the Ordeal do not march to save the World, Proyas
at least not first and foremost. They march to save their wives and children. Their tribes and their nations. If they learn that the world, their world, slips into ruin behind them, that their wives and daughters may perish for want of their shields, their swords, the Host of Hosts would melt about the edges, then collapse. — R. Scott Bakker

Here we find further argument for Gotagga's supposition that the world is round. How else could all men stand higher than their brothers? — R. Scott Bakker

Old women are more reconciled to death than old men. By bringing life to the world, we come to see ourselves as debtors. What's given is taken. — R. Scott Bakker

The world is a circle that possesses as many centres as it does men. — R. Scott Bakker

Fot he sin of the idolater is not that he worships stone, but that he worships one stone over others. — R. Scott Bakker

You've learned the lesson,' Kellhus had said on one of those rare mornings when he shared her breakfast.
'What lesson might that be?'
'That the lessons never end.' He laughed, gingerly sipped his steaming tea. 'That ignorance is infinite. — R. Scott Bakker

Love is like sleep. One can never seize, never force love. — R. Scott Bakker

And he now knew with certainty that the world was hollowed of its wonder by knowledge and travel, that when one stripped away the mysteries, its dimensions collapsed rather than bloomed. Of course, the world was a much more sophisticated place to him now than it had been when he was a child, but it was also far simpler. Everywhere
men grasped and grasped, as though the titles "king," "shriah," and "grandmaster" were simply masks worn by the same hungry animal. Avarice, it seemed to him, was the world's only dimension. — R. Scott Bakker

To be a student required a peculiar kind of capitulation, a willingness not simply to do as one is told, but to surrendor the movements of one's soul to the unknown complexities of another's. A willingness, not simply to be moved, but to be remade. — R. Scott Bakker

I wanted a literate, socially intricate, and cosmopolitan world - something I could have fun destroying. — R. Scott Bakker

To resent is to brood in inaction, to pass through life acting in a manner indistinguishable from those who bear no grudges. But hatred hails from a wilder, far more violent tribe. Even when you cannot strike out, you strike nonetheless. Inward, if not outward, as if such things have direction. To hate, especially without recourse to vengeance, is to besiege yourself, to starve yourself to the point of eating your own, then to lay wreaths of blame at the feet of the accused. — R. Scott Bakker

Sometimes he would stare at the bare trees for so long, they would lose their radial dimensions and seem something flat, like blood smeared into the wrinkles about an old woman's eyes. — R. Scott Bakker

Masses of warring men animated the horizon, crashing into stubborn ranks, churning in melee. The air didn't so much thunder as hiss with the sound of distant battle, like a sea heard through a conch shell, Martemus thought - an angry sea. Winded, he watched the first of Conphas's assassins stride up behind Prince Kellhus, raise his short-sword ...
There was an impossible moment - a sharp intake of breath.
The Prophet simply turned and caught the descending blade between his thumb and forefinger. "No," he said, then swept around, knocking the man to the turf with an unbelievable kick. Somehow the assassin's sword found its way into his left hand. Still crouched, the Prophet drove it down through the assassin's throat, nailing him to the turf.
A mere heartbeat had passed. — R. Scott Bakker

All men are frauds. Some, the wise, fool only others. Others, the foolish, fool only themselves. And a rare few fool both others and themselves - they are the rulers of Men — R. Scott Bakker

You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill nor daring. It is not a trial of souls, not the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them. — R. Scott Bakker

Sit with a merchant or sit with a beggar, and it'll always be the beggar who buys your first drink. — R. Scott Bakker

Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human. — R. Scott Bakker

Sheltered by his caste, Sarcellus had not, as the impoverished must, made fear the pivot of his passions. As a result he possessed an immovable self-assurance. He felt. He acted. He judged. The fear of being wrong that so characterized Achamian simply did not exist for Cutias Sarcellus. Where Achamian was ignorant of the answers, Sarcellus was ignorant of the questions. No certitude, she thought, could be greater. — R. Scott Bakker

The bondage we are born into is the bondage we cannot see. Verily, freedom is little more than the ignorance of tyranny. Live long enough, and you will see: Men resent not the whip so much as the hand that wields it. — R. Scott Bakker

Gods are but greater demons," the Cishaurim said, "hungers across the surface of eternity, wanting only to taste the clarity of our souls. Can you not see this? — R. Scott Bakker

Saying 'I could have done more,' Zin, is what marks a man as a man and not a God. — R. Scott Bakker

Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy. — R. Scott Bakker

Conviction, no matter how narcotic its depth, simply did not make true. — R. Scott Bakker

Like a stern father, war shames men into hating their childhood games. — R. Scott Bakker

Given the manifest frailty of men, given the long succession of delusions that was their history, what could be more preposterous than claiming oneself the least deluded, let alone privy to the absolute? — R. Scott Bakker

Most men would rather die in deception than live in uncertainty. — R. Scott Bakker

To indulge it is to breed it. To punish it is to feed it. Madness knows no bridle but the knife. - SCYLVENDI — R. Scott Bakker

You can count the bruises on your heart easily enough, but numbering sins is a far tricker matter. Men are eternally forgetting for their benefit. They leave it to the World to remeber, and to the Outside to call them to harsh accout. One hundred Heavens ... for one thousand Hells. — R. Scott Bakker

There was such a difference, he thought, between the beauty that illuminated, and the beauty that was illuminated. — R. Scott Bakker

Sleep, when deep enough, is indistinguishable from vigilance. — R. Scott Bakker

No decision is so fine as to not bind us to its consequences. No consequence is so unexpected as to absolve us of our decisions. Not even death. — R. Scott Bakker

Suffer not a whore to live, for she maketh a pit of her womb. — R. Scott Bakker

If soot stains your tunic, dye it black. This is vengeance. — R. Scott Bakker

One might sooner wash shit from shit than cleanse a soul so wicked! — R. Scott Bakker

The world is a big place and our brain is only three pounds. — R. Scott Bakker

You can only believe so many lies before becoming one of them. — R. Scott Bakker

The vulgar think the God by analogy to man and so worship Him in the form of the Gods. The learned think the God by analogy to principles and so worship Him in the form of Love or Truth. But the wises think the God not at all. They know that thought, which is finite, can only do violence to the God, who is infinite. It is enough, they say, that the God thinks them. — R. Scott Bakker

A lifetime of cannibal hatred — R. Scott Bakker

Truths were carved from the identical wood as were lies
words
and so sank or floated with identical ease. But since truths were carved by the World, they rarely appeased Men and their innumerable vanities. Men hhad no taste for facts that did not ornament or enrich, and so they willfully
if not knowingly
panelled their lives with shining and intricate falsehoods. — R. Scott Bakker

Misogyny is simply a symptom of how stupid and self-serving we all are. As is racism. As is any outlook that lumps people into pejorative categories (like 'neckbeards'), that urges or insinuates hatred of people based on simplistic identifications. — R. Scott Bakker

Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills. — R. Scott Bakker

Let us be moved, you and I, by the things themselves. Let us discover each other. — R. Scott Bakker

A beggar's mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king's mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity. — R. Scott Bakker

Do not mistake me, Inrithi. In this much Conphas is right. You are all staggering drunks to me. Boys who would play at war when you should kennel with your mothers. You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill not daring. It is not a trial of souls, nor the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them.
You have offered me war, and I have accepted. Nothing more. I will not regret your losses. I will not bow my head before your funeral pyres. I will not rejoice at your triumphs. But I have taken the wager. I will suffer with you. I will put Fanim to the sword, and drive their wives and children to the slaughter. And when I sleep, I will dream of their lamentations and be glad of heart. — R. Scott Bakker

It seemed poison had been poured into wonder's own decanter. — R. Scott Bakker

Kings never lie. They demand the world be mistaken. - CONRIYAN PROVERB When — R. Scott Bakker

Exhaustion has a way of parting the veils between men, not so much because the effort of censoring their words exceeds them, but because weariness is the foe of volatility. Oft times insults that would pierce the wakeful simply thud against the sleepless and fatigued. — R. Scott Bakker

Where no paths exist, a man strays only when he misses his destination. There is no crime, no transgression, no sin save foolishness or incompetence, and no obscenity save the tyranny of custom. — R. Scott Bakker

It is strange the way trauma deadens curiosity. To suffer cruelty in excess is to be delivered from care. The human heart sets aside its questions when the future is too capricious. This is the irony of tribulation.
To know the world will never be so bad. — R. Scott Bakker

This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late. — R. Scott Bakker

He knew that one never stood still, even while waiting. That sometimes the sheathed knife could cut the most throats of all. — R. Scott Bakker

A cut scarred where a caress faded away. — R. Scott Bakker

Dreams drawn from the sheath. — R. Scott Bakker