Quotes from Scott Lynch

Know something? I'd lay even odds that between the people following us and the people hunting us, we've become this city's principle means of employment. Tal Verrar's entire economy is now based on fucking with us .

Throwing blondes at Locke Lamora was not unlike throwing lettuce at sharks.

When you can't cheat the game, you'd best find a means to cheat the players.

You're one third bad intentions, one third pure avarice, and one eighth sawdust. What's left, I'll credit, must be brains.

Locke sighed. 'So this is winning,' he said. 'It is,' replied Jean. 'It can go fuck itself,' said Locke.

You simply collapsed, sir. In layman's terms, your body revoked its permission for you to continue heaping abuse upon it.

If you want to write a negative review, don't tickle me gently with your aesthetic displeasure about my work. Unleash the goddamn Kraken.

I cut off his fingers to get him to talk, and when he'd confessed everything I wanted to hear, I had his fucking tongue cut out, and the stump cauterized." Everyone in the room stared at him. "I called him an asshole, too," said Locke. "He didn't like that.

Just one question, you arrogant fucking cocksucker" said Locke. "I'll grant the Lamora part is easy to spot; the truth is, I didn't know about the apt translation when I took the name. I borrowed it from this old sausage dealer who was kind to me once, back in Catchfire before the plague. I just liked the way it sounded. "But what the fuck" he said slowly, "ever gave you the idea that Locke was the first name I was actually born with?

I don't expect life to make sense," he said after a few moments, "but it could certainly be pleasant if it would stop kicking us in the balls.

My name's Jean Tannen, and I'm the ambush.

He said that life boils down to standing in line to get shit dropped on your head. Everyone's got a place in the queue, you can't get out of it, and just when you start to congratulate yourself on surviving your dose of shit, you discover that the line is actually circular.

What kind of knife is this?" Locke held a rounded buttering utensil up for Chains' inspection. "It's all wrong. You couldn't kill anyone with this.

You've got that motherly concern in your eyes, Jean. I must look like I'm hammered as shit," said Locke. "Actually you look like you were executed last week.

When the sky's falling, I take shelter under bullshit.

So that makes us robbers of robbers," said Bug, "who pretend to be robbers working for a robber of other robbers.

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

You are beyond mad," said Locke after several moments of silent, furious thought. "Full-on barking madness is a state of rational bliss to which you may not aspire. Men living in gutters and drinking their own piss would shun your company. You are a prancing lunatic.

What is government but theft by consent?

I want to hug you. And I want to tear your gods-damned head off. Both at once." "Ah," said Locke. "Near as I can tell, that's the definition of 'family' right there.

Worst of all, the inner vault is guarded by a live dragon, attended by fifty naked women armed with poisoned spears, each of them sworn to die in Requin's service. All redheads. -You're just making that up, Jean.

I can't name the poison that's killing your friend. But the one that's killing you is called hope.

Advice," Doña Vorchenza chuckled. "Advice. 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.

Those prancing little pants-wetters come here to learn the colorful and gentlemanly art of fencing, with its many sporting limitations and its proscriptions against dishonorable engagements. You on the other hand, you are going to learn how to kill men with a sword .