Scott Lynch

““We were sent here to learn from you!”“You want a lesson, boy? If you find yourself being born, climb back in as quick as you can, because life’s a bottomless feast of shit.””

“Maybe this is going to complicate the hell out of things. So what? You’re the complication I want more than anything else. You’re my favorite complication.”

“Push your luck, gorgeous, and eventually luck pushes back.”

““Why the hell are you here?”“Really?” said Locke. “Yours? You keep alluding to its existence. Somehow I’m not convinced.””

““My responsibility was to tell you the truth, not wrap you in swaddling clothes.” She raised her hood again, half-veiling her face in shadow. “Nor protect you from your own badly aimed temper.””

“Are you really that arrogant, that logic is as optional as a fashion accessory for you?”

““In my dreams I sign chits and file papers,” Nikoros muttered. “Then I awake to sign real chits and file real papers. I imagine my grave marker will be carved as a writing desk. ‘Here lies Nikoros Via Lupa, wifeless and heirless, but gods how he could alphabetize!’””

“Next came the sort of kiss that banished the world to distant background noise and seemed to last a month.”

“Sabetha threw her own shoes and costume components on the tiles near the bath. She retained only her black hose and a dressing gown. Locke did his best to look like he wasn’t staring, and she did an admirable job of pretending she wasn’t encouraging him.”

“A boy may be as disagreeable as he pleases, but when a girl refuses to crap sunshine on command, the world mutters darkly about her moods.”

“... It's perfect! Locke would appreciate it."”

“Quit being so hard on yourself. We are what we are; we love what we love. We don't need to justify it to anyone... not even to ourselves.”

““Better to say nothing and be thought a fool,” said Amarelle, “than to interfere in the business of wizards and remove all doubt.””

“You have confused me with someone who knows what’s going on.”

““I sometimes think that ‘friend’ is just a word I use for all the people I haven't murdered yet.””

““Sure, kid. Look, there's a very old saying in my family: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is another wizard fucking with you.’””

“You can’t help being young, but it’s past time that you stopped being stupid.”

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

“Our patron has always sort of danced upon the notion that austerity and piety go hand in hand; down here, we show our appreciation for things by appreciating, if you get me.”

““Liquor does this? Even after you’re sober?”“A cruel joke, isn’t it? The gods put a price tag on everything, it seems.””

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

““This entire situation is insane.” Jean slammed his book shut in disgust.“It was insane before; now it’s become malicious.””

“Time’s a river, Locke, and we’ve always drifted farther down it than we think.”

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

““Advice,” chuckled Doña Vorchenza. “The years play a sort of alchemical trick, transmuting one’s mutterings to a state of respectability. Give advice at forty and you’re a nag. Give it at seventy and you’re a sage.””

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

“I’m sure we can communicate. I speak fluent hatchet.”

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

“I have always found the presumptions of others to be the best possible disguise—haven’t you?”

“In time, you’ll come to understand that a state like ours cannot afford to offer up a show of weakness for honesty’s sake; Duke Nicovante charges me with vouchsafing his security, not his conscience.”

“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.”

“I make it a point never to trust men with weapons to my windpipe.”

““What’s your hand look like?““A wasteland of bitter frustration.“”

““Here's to charming losers, I suppose.““If only we knew where to find some.“”

““I suspect that drink has made you impulsive.““Drink makes me see funny; the gods made me impulsive.“”

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

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

““When I get this door open, you’re dead, Jean!““When you get that door open? I look forward to many long years of life, then.“”

“Master Kosta...What a pleasure! Selendri tells me you’ve expressed an interest in getting killed.”

““I say again, impossible.”“And I correct you again. Difficult. ‘Difficult’ and ‘impossible’ are cousins often mistaken for one another, with very little in common.””

“Some mysteries are better off with their throats slit.”

“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.”

““We met five years ago.“ Jean scratched his beard. “On a sea voyage. We became business partners out of sheer boredom. Since then we‘ve been inseparable.““Chump! I can hardly wait to see you get yours!“”

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

“By rights he was still outrunning his age, still ahead of most men nearing threescore years, but he knew deep in his heart that there would never be any way of running fast enough.”

“I don’t want you to agree with me; I want you to use your misplaced acorn of a brain before the squirrel comes looking for it again.”

““We already know how too—”“I don’t care what you think you know, Kosta. Until further notice, we’re gonna presume that you’re too dumb to count to one.””

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

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

“I find it best to make corpses of complications.”

“I’m losing my taste for subtlety as fast as I’m depleting my supply.”

“”Oh, gods,” he cried. ”Oh, gods protect me! It’s you!”“Of course it’s me,“ said Locke. “You just don’t know who the hell I am yet.“”

“”Is this man, ah, senile?””I assure you I am,” roared Cordo. Anger changed his countenance utterly. ”And I will not be put off from business by assassins in my own bedroom! Now, you will either kill me immediately or negotiate the price of my release!””

““Thank you very much, sir,” said Beth with nothing resembling actual gratitude.”

“People die when they get hanged. It’s why they hang them!”

“Refusal noted and cordially declined.”

“I’m going to give you a thorough examination. This may cause some discomfort, but don’t complain. I won’t be listening.”

“Gods, all this maneuvering for moral advantage. You’d think we were married.”

““You rule the Bondsmagi,” said Locke, incredulously.“Rule is too strong a term. We do occasionally manage to avert total chaos.””

“The sun is up, and all that money out there won’t steal itself.”

““Government affairs are a bit beyond our experience,” said Jean.“Nonsense. You’ll feel right at home. What is government but theft by consent? You’ll be moving in a society of kindred spirits.””

““What happened wasn’t fair!”“Fair? You mean to claim with a straight face that you buy into that heresy, my boy?””

““Yes, I like it a lot, it’s all worth having to bathe, even!”“Never mind. That subject will be sufficiently confusing in its own good time.””

““You know, believe it or not, ‘the gods will provide’ is not a fucking plan, lad. You’ve got one hell of a talent for improvisation, but when that lets you down, it lets you down hard.””

““I never even liked cats all that much.”“Surely you realize,” said Patience, “that cats are no great respecters of human opinion.””

“They’ll be fine, and wiser for the experience. Young minds are brittle. Oldsters, now, we’ve had some disappointments. We’ve set aside the notion that we’re the center of the universe, so our minds bend with strain instead of meeting it head-on.”

““You need money that badly?”“As a tool, certainly. Its application is simple and universally effective.””

“Most of us find it starkly ludicrous that the height of all possible ambition, to the ungifted, must be to drape oneself in crowns and robes.”

“Damn it, when will you learn that refusing to admit you’ve lost isn’t the same as winning?”

“Nobody admires anyone else without qualification. If they do they’re after an image, not a person.”

““You’re trying to be charming again,” she said softly, “but I do not choose to be charmed, Locke Lamora.””

“Locke put his head in his hands and sighed.“I don’t expect life to make sense,” he said after a few moments, “but it would certainly be pleasant if it would stop kicking us in the balls.””

““Let’s be obvious. Me brute, you weasel.”“Agreed. You brute, me charming mastermind.””

“I’m not without my sympathies, Lamora. They just don’t necessarily reside with you.”

““Nikoros, your job this afternoon is to say yes to anything that comes out of my mouth. The more you rehearse this, the sooner it’ll become a smooth mechanical process allowing no time for painful reflection. Can you practice for me?”“You’re a natural.””

““I never would’ve thought—““Don’t think,” said Locke. “I’m paid to do that for you.””

““That’s not worth worrying about. If pressed I’ll use the never-fail universal apology.”“‘I was badly misinformed, I deeply regret the error, go fuck yourself with this bag of money.’””

““There were difficulties.”“Oh,” she said, “so you’re the man whose life develops complications! I’ve so longed to meet you; the rest of us here in this world have it much too easy, I’m afraid.””