Quotes from R. Scott Bakker

Where power was perceived, power was given.

For whatever reason, heavy drinking at once intensified and deadened the Dreams. The way they slurred into one another made them seem less immediate, more dreamlike, but the passions that accompanied them . . . They were unbearable at the best of times. With drink they became lunatic with misery. He

Her manhood arched turgid in her leggings.

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." This was the iron habit of Men.

Some starve. Some eat. Disparity is simply the order of things. It's only when fat men make sauce out of other's starvation that it becomes a sin.

to observe a thing always is to observe a thing not at all.

Kings never lie. They demand the world be mistaken. —CONRIYAN PROVERB

Name after mysterious name would fall from those old lips—the Shriah of the Thousand Temples, the malevolent heathens of Kian, the all-conquering Scylvendi, the scheming sorcerers of the Scarlet Spires, and so on

There are three, and only three, kinds of men in the world: cynics, fanatics, and Mandate Schoolmen.

A sorcerer and a whore. Perhaps a certain desperation was to be expected of such unions, as though that strange word, "love," became profound in proportion to the degree one was scorned by others.

It … It … It is what it is!

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

After all, spies were little different from whores. Sorcerers less so.

What is the meaning of a deluded life?

It was ever the same: 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.

Tir hoila ishrahoi, coi ri pirith mutoi'on; Tir miyil oitossi, kun ri mursal arilil hi; Tirsa hir'gingall vo'is?

Only children and fools, who confused tales of war with war itself, could think the task simple. For them, war was battle, and they always squinted in surprise when veterans spoke of latrines and cannibalism and gangrenous feet and so on.

the hot glare of evening winked into the chill glow of dusk in a heartbeat

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.

War was an extension of argument, and swords were simply words honed to a bloodletting edge.

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 words spoken before. Every time we listen, we allow the movements of another soul to carry our own.

Men, Kellhus had once told her, were like coins: they had two sides. Where one side of them saw, the other side of them was seen, and though all men were both at once, men could only truly know the side of themselves that saw and the side of others that was seen—they could only truly know the inner half of themselves and the outer half of others.

She understood, and it terrified her, for it was a thing too near to love.

Like many arrogant men, Proyas thought his insults an extension of his honesty.