The Broken Empire Quotes & Sayings

Words, words, word. Once, I had the gift. I could make love out of words as a potter makes cups of clay. Love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. For sixpence a line, I could cause a riot in a nunnery. But now
I have lost my gift. It's as if my quill is broken, as if the organ of my imagination has dried up, as if the proud -illegible word- of my genius has collapsed. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Four years and everything was the same, except me. — Mark Lawrence

What made my loss, my pain, any more important than everyone else's. — Mark Lawrence

If you must run, have something to run toward, so it feels less like cowardice. — Mark Lawrence

A time of terror comes. A dark time. The graves continue to open and the Dead King prepares to sail.But the world holds worse things than dead men. A dark time comes. — Mark Lawrence

We rode in silence for a while and I wondered if men were the world's leaves. If as we aged the world filled us with its poisons so as old men, filled to the brim with the bitterest gall, we could fall into hell and take it all with us. Perhaps without death the world would choke on its own evils. — Mark Lawrence

So there goes Jesus spinning power on its head again. His power was not in crushing but in being crushed, triumphing over the empire's sword with his cross. Mustard must be crushed, ground, broken for its power to be released. — Shane Claiborne

In the end it seems we're just toys, easy to break and hard to mend. — Mark Lawrence

Go fuck yourself,' I said. I kept it pleasant. — Mark Lawrence

They say that time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. — Mark Lawrence

People who talk about the weather would be better served by admitting they've nothing to say but like the sound of their own voice. — Mark Lawrence

Brother Row you could trust to make a long shot with a short bow. You could trust him to come out of a knife fight with somebody else's blood on his shirt. You could trust him to lie, to cheat, to steal, and to watch your back. You couldn't trust his eyes though. He had kind eyes, and you couldn't trust them. — Mark Lawrence

Take a rest and the world catches up with you. Lesson in life - keep moving. — Mark Lawrence

War, my friends, is a thing of beauty. — Mark Lawrence

Seasons had come and gone; presidents in Kabul had been inaugurated and murdered; an empire had been defeated; old wars had ended and new ones had broken out. But Mariam had hardly noticed, hardly cared. She had passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold.
But somehow, over these last months, Laila and Aziza - a harami like herself, as it turned out - had become extensions of her, and now, without them, the life Mariam had tolerated for so long suddenly seemed intolerable.
We're leaving this spring, Aziza and I. Come with us, Mariam. — Khaled Hosseini

The Golds have everything, yet they demand sacrifices even from their own. This place is sick. This empire broken. It eats its kings, its queens, as hungrily as it does the paupers who mill its earth. — Pierce Brown

That's not a plan. That's a way to get a death so famously stupid that they'll be laughing about it in alehouses for a hundred years to come, Makin said. — Mark Lawrence

Perhaps I just wanted to know what it was that I wanted. Maybe that is all that growing up means. — Mark Lawrence

There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. — Mark Lawrence

It's an irony of our times that men seeking peace must make war. — Mark Lawrence

Dark times call for dark choices. Choose me. — Mark Lawrence

Sir Makin is almost the handsome knight of legend, dark locks curling, tall, a swordman's build, darkest eyes, his armour always polished, blade keen. Only the thickness of his lips and the sharpness of his nose leave him shy of a maiden's dream. His mouth too expressive, his look too hawkish. In other matters too Sir Makin is "almost". Almost honourable, almost honest. About his friendship, though, there is no almost. — Mark Lawrence

When you're in a dark place, and your light is going to run out before too long, you get on with things. It's a wonder to me how few people apply that same logic to their lives. — Mark Lawrence

When pain bites, men bargain. Boys too. We twist and turn, we plead and beg, we offer our tormentor what he wants so that the hurting will stop. And when there is no torturer to placate, no hooded man with hot irons and tongs, just a burn you can't escape, we bargain with God, or ourselves, depending on the size of our egos ... Take the pain, I said, and I will be a good man. Or if not that, a better man. We all become weasels with enough hurt on us. But I think a small part of it was more than that. A small part was the terrible two-edged sword called experience, cutting away at the cruel child I was, carving out whatever man might yet to come. I promised a better one. Thought I have been known to lie. — Mark Lawrence

You can't grow if you're constantly defined by this collection of frozen moments that you keep returning to. And if you can't grow, you're not alive. — Mark Lawrence

Clarity of vision is a thing much prized. I find when you turn that clear sight upon yourself - and see through to the truth behind your own actions - it might be better to be blind. — Mark Lawrence

It's what I am, and if you want excuses, come and take them. — Mark Lawrence

Tell me this," I said. "My world. It's not like the one I read about in the oldest books. When they talk about magic, about ghosts, it's as if they are fairy-tales to frighten children. And yet I have seen the dead walk, seen a boy bring fire with just a thought."
Fexler frowned as if considering how to explain. "Think of reality as a ship whose course is set, whose wheel is locked in place by universal constants. Our greatest achievement, and downfall, was to turn that wheel, just a fraction. The role of the observer was always important - we discovered that. If a tree falls in the wood and no one hears it, then it is both standing and not standing. The cat is both alive and dead."
"Who mentioned a fecking cat? — Mark Lawrence

In the end though, everybody dies, but not everybody lives - the climber, though he may die young, will have lived. — Mark Lawrence

All men will dig their heels in if pushed enough. All men will reach the point that they say "no" for no reason other than opposition, for no reason other than the word fits their mouth, and tastes as good as it sounds. — Mark Lawrence

In the long evenings in west Beirut, there was time enough to consider where the core of the tragedy lay. In the age of Assyrians, the Empire of Rome, in the 1860s perhaps? In the french mandate? In Auschwitz? In Palestine? In the rusting front-door keys now buried deep in the rubble of Chatila? In the 1978 Israeli invasion? In the 1982 invasion? Was there a point where one could have said: Stop, beyond this point there is no future? Did I witness the point of no return in 1976? That 12 year-old on the broken office chair in the ruins of the Beirut front line. Now he was in his mid-twenties - if he was still alive - a gunboy, no more. A gunman, no doubt ... — Robert Fisk

And why did they choose to follow me? Why did you?" I asked ...
"I follow you because I'm tired of war. I would see it stopped. One empire. One law. It doesn't matter so much how or who, just being united would stop the madness," Makin said.
"Heh, I can feel the loyalty!" I pushed up and stood, stretching. "Wouldn't the Prince of Arrow make a better emperor?"
"I don't think he'll win," said Makin. — Mark Lawrence

The Lights ... " said Norv the Raw, as if we might not have noticed.
Before any further statements of the obvious could be made doors of gleaming steel started to slide down from recesses above every entrance above the Gilden Gate. The action accompanied by a squealing noise that set my teeth on edge, the sound of nails down Lundist's chalkboard.
"The doors ... " said Norv. I resisted temptation to beat him around the head. — Mark Lawrence

I swallowed darkness, and darkness swallowed me. Without light, without the beat if a heart to count the time, you learn that eternity is nothing fear. In fact, if they'd just leave you to it, an eternity alone in the dark can be a welcome alternative to the business of living. — Mark Lawrence

Words are blunt instruments, better suited to murder than to making sense of the world. — Mark Lawrence

It's the silence that scares me. It's the blank page on which I can write my own fears. — Mark Lawrence

If in poetry court she was called
to testify on matters where
I was condemned to imprisonment: parking my ego
at a broken meter, line violations, forced rhyme,
dealing stanzaics to children, shooting
off my mouth, getting cute, for even this
latest attempt at verse, she would tell the whole truth,
she would admit from the pit
of her unsung brilliance,
from all of the paintings and poems
she herself has been making
and storing in the vast empire of her
singing soul, your Honor, my daughter is guilty
of plagiarizing my cells. — Kristen Henderson

The captive had broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock- tick
a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome were laid when Christ was crucified; when the Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was "news." It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need? — Mark Twain

The pain became my enemy. More than the Count Renar, more than my father's bartering with lives he should have held more precious than crown, or glory, or Jesu on the cross. — Mark Lawrence

Call it a personal foible. Some people are scared of spiders. I'm scared of immolation. Also spiders. — Mark Lawrence

In the talcum on the floor around him he could see the imprints of his mother's feet. She had moved from side to side, propelled by an over-eager partner, perhaps one of the Japanese officers to whom she was teaching to tango. Jim tried out the dance steps himself, which seemed far more violent than any tango he had ever seen, and managed to fall and cut his hand on the broken mirror. — J.G. Ballard

Sometimes I wished I could cut away old memories and let the wind take them. If a sharp knife could pare away the weakness of those days, I would slice until nothing but the hard lessons remained. — Mark Lawrence

I followed but I held my tongue. I'd seen children tag after grown men throwing question after question, but I had put childhood aside. My questions could wait, at least until the rain stopped. — Mark Lawrence

I held to my anger, drank from my well of poison. These things are not good things, but at least they're mine. — Mark Lawrence

I kept my voice calm. It wasn't hard, I was calm. Anger carries less horror with it, men understand anger. It promises resolution; maybe bloody resolution, but swift. — Mark Lawrence

There are truths you know but will not speak. Even to yourself in the darkness where we are all of us alone. There are memories you see and yet don't see. — Mark Lawrence

As a child there's a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one ... each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment. — Mark Lawrence

When you've committed yourself to violence it takes an almost inhuman effort to stop short. It's one of those things that once you've started need to be finished, rather like coitus, interrupting that's a sin, even the priests say so. — Mark Lawrence

I knew myself broken, to burn over every refusal, to feel my blood rise at the slightest provocation, but knowing and fixing are different things. — Mark Lawrence

Sometime, it's easier to love someone with flaws you can forgive in return for them forgiving yours. — Mark Lawrence

We twist and turn, we plead and beg, we offer our tormentor what he wants so that the hurting will stop. And when there is no torturer to placate, no hooded man with hot irons and tongs, just a burn you can't escape, we bargain with God, or ourselves, depending on the size of our egos. I made mock of the dying at Mabberton and now their ghosts watched me burn. Take the pain, I said, and I will be a good man. Or if not that, a better man. We all become weasels with enough hurt on us. But I thing a small part of it was more than that. A small part was that terrible two-edged sword called experience, cutting away at the cruel child I was, carving out whatever man might be yet to come. I promised a better one. Though I have been known to lie. — Mark Lawrence

I think you need to have lived more to truly know a man's heart. You need to have made more transactions in life to know the worth of the coin you spend so freely. — Mark Lawrence

Pretty armour doesn't make a warrior. — Mark Lawrence

I took the Nuban's bow. I didn't trust the midget to be able to run down any thieves, and besides, I might want to shoot a circus clown or two. Just for laughs. — Mark Lawrence

I would shake the world until its teeth rattled if that was required to have it spit out an answer. — Mark Lawrence

We die a little every day and by degrees we're reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars. — Mark Lawrence

I wondered once if Corion had put that sickness in me, if I were the tool and he the architect of that violence and cruelty. I wondered if having taken his head, if having grown from boy to man, I would be a better person. I wondered if I might be the man the Nuban wanted me to be, the man Tutor Lundist hoped for. — Mark Lawrence

I kissed her cheek then, because I feared to do it and though commonsense may occasionally bind me, I'll be fucked if fear will. — Mark Lawrence

Many men do not look their part. Wisdom may wait behind a foolish smile, bravery can gaze from eyes that cry fright. — Mark Lawrence

There's a slope down toward evil, a gentle gradient that can be ignored at each step, unfelt. It's not until you look back, see the distant heights where you once lived, that you understand your journey. — Mark Lawrence

There's a road to hell that is paved with good intentions but it's a long route. The quicker path is paved with the kind of ignorance that clever men who just don't want to know are best at. — Mark Lawrence

But words are only words and they seldom turn a person from their path unless they want to be turned. — Mark Lawrence

We weren't meant to live forever, nor dwell in solitude. A life without change is no life. — Mark Lawrence

We came to woodlands, with leaves unfurling on every branch, as if one blow of spring's green hammer had set them exploding from the bud. — Mark Lawrence

But I respected his instincts as a killer and I liked the honesty of the man. And who was I to judge? I'd F'ed a necromancer and killed a Pope within the space of a week. — Mark Lawrence

A Dark time comes.
My time.
If it offends you.
Stop Me. — Mark Lawrence

In a duel, man to man, sword against sword, it can be a lack of skill that gets you killed. Often as not, though, it'll be a matter of luck, or if it goes on too long, then it'll be the man who tires first that tends to die.
In the end it's about staying power. They should put that on headstones, Got tired. — Mark Lawrence

With his decision to use force against the violent extremists of the Islamic State, President
Obama ... is stepping once again - and with understandably great reluctance - into the chaos
of an entire civilization that has broken down. Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but
gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism -
the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition-than at any time since the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire a century ago. — Hisham Melhem

When I started the 'Broken Empire' trilogy, I thought it was a short story, and I didn't know the beginning, middle, or end of even that. — Mark Lawrence

We can't be trapped by fear. Lives lived within such walls are just slower deaths. — Mark Lawrence

Men who are certain of everything - well perhaps they're not men at all. — Mark Lawrence

Do you know why the leaves change colour, Makin?" They did look spectacular. The forest had grown around us as we traveled and the canopy burned with colour, from deepest red to flame orange, an autumn fire spreading in defiance of the rain.
"I don't know," he said, "Why do they change?"
"Before a tree sheds a leaf it pumps it full of all the poison it can't rid itself of otherwise. That red there - that's a man's skin blotching with burst veins after an assassin spikes his last meal with roto-weed. The poison spreading through him before he dies. — Mark Lawrence

One basic formula for understanding the Community is this: 'Take five broken empires, add the sixth one later, and make one big neo-colonial empire out of it all.' — Johan Galtung

Nothing can be cut away. Even the worst of our memories is part of the foundation that keeps us in the world. — Mark Lawrence

And in the moments of rest, when we orphans faced each other, mud-cheeked, leaning on our forks, there's a camaraderie that builds without you knowing it. — Mark Lawrence

She whispered, Even with a broken hand, you are the knight I'd most want and trust to rescue me-and I know you can do it. You are the boldest, bravest, most noble knight in the Holy Empire. — Melanie Dickerson

The knife felt like hot iron in my fist. I hated myself for what I was going to do, and just as much for hesitating. I hated myself for the weakness in me. — Mark Lawrence

I think maybe we die every day. Maybe we're born new each dawn, a little changed, a little further on our own road. When enough days stand between you and the person you were, you're strangers. Maybe that's what growing up is. Maybe I have grown up. — Mark Lawrence

Still the music, the deep slow melody, the high and broken counterpoint, as if the mountains themselves had become the score, as if the glories of hidden caves and secret peaks had wrapped around the ageless majesty of the ocean and turned into the music of all men's lives, played out by a woman's fingers, without pause or mercy, reaching in, twisting, laying us bare. — Mark Lawrence

A victim who believes himself anticipated at every turn is not only crippled by uncertainty but also easier to predict. — Mark Lawrence

The perfumes of lords and ladies tickled at my nose: lavender and orange oil. On the road, shit has the decency to stink. — Mark Lawrence

But now I thought of Father, and it felt good to know I could still feel fear. — Mark Lawrence