Quotes from Glen Cook

Quite unwittingly I saved the lives of twenty enemies of the Stranglers scheduled to be tortured and murdered during the night. The priests freed them to tell the world that the Deceivers were real and had found their messiah, that those who did not come to Kina soon would be devoured in the Year of the Skulls. A fun bunch of guys, Croaker would say.

The Dead Man once told me that monsters aren't born, they're made. That they are memorials which take years of cruelty to sculpt. And that while we should weep for the tortured child who served as raw material, we should permit no sentiment to impede us while we rid the world of the terror strewn by the finished work. It took me a while to figure out what he meant but I do understand him now.

Limper flopped violently. The gag flew out of his mouth. His ankle bonds parted. He gained his feet, tried to run, tried to mouth some spell that would protect him. He had gone thirty feet when a thousand fiery snakes streaked out of the night and swarmed him. They covered his body. They slithered into his mouth and nose, into his eyes and ears. They went in the easy way and came gnawing out through his back and chest and belly. And he screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

A field of scarlet with nine hanged men in black and six yellow daggers in the upper left and lower right quadrants, respectively, while the upper right quandrant featured a shattered skull and the lower left boasted a bird astride a severed head. It might have been a raven. Or an eagle.

One's own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid. Death is the only exorcism.

Goblin, that was a dumb stunt. - It sure was. Made me feel forty years younger.

This is a favorite game, matching wits with a Raker. He is blind to the dead, to the burning villages, to the starving children. As is the Rebel. Two blind armies, able to see nothing but one another.

Did I snore again last night?' -'You solidified your grasp on the all-time women's championship. You're ready to compete at the next level.

Oh, 'twould be marvelous if the world and its moral questions were like some game board, with plain black players and white, and fixed rules, and nary a shade of grey.

One's own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid down.

Cruel it may be, but most of us enjoy what we do—and the Captain more than anyone. This is a favorite game, matching wits with a Raker. He is blind to the dead, to the burning villages, to the starving children. As is the Rebel. Two blind armies, able to see nothing but one another.

Death wish. Suicidal tendencies. Know what causes that, Garrett? Diet. That's right. Your meat-heavy human diet. You need more roughage. You don't get enough roughage, your bowels tighten up. When your bowels tighten up you get these dangerous, self-destructive mood swings . . .

An army without faith in itself is beaten more surely than an army defeated in battle.

You will find, as you mature, that most people are weak. And lazy. Weak, lazy people whine and complain. Otherwise, they would have to take a risk to make things right. And the wrong they suffer often don't need righting because they exist only inside their minds.

If brains were glazier's putty, he couldn't weatherproof a windowless room.

We all have our pasts. I suspect we keep them nebulous not because we are hiding from our yesterdays but because we think we will cut more romantic figures if we roll our eyes and dispense delicate hints about beautiful women forever beyond our reaches. Those men whose stories I have uprooted are running from the law, not a tragic love affair.

One's own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid. Death is the only exorcism.

The Hanged Man stopped gesturing and struck a pose: man listening.

Essentially, the mercenary sets morality aside, or at best reorders the customary structures to fit the needs of his way of life. The great issues become how well he does his job, how faithfully he carries out his commission, how well he adheres to a standard demanding unswerving loyalties to his comrades. He dehumanizes the world outside the bounds of his outfit. Then anything he does, or witnesses, becomes of minor significance as long as its brunt is borne outside the Company

It was a night for screamers. A broiling, sticky night of the sort that abrades that last thin barrier between the civilized man and the monster crouched in his soul.

Over coming days, when I sneaked down to the Buskin, he revealed everything recorded where he appears as the focal character. I do not think I have met many men who disgusted me more. Nastier

Early birds. Let 'em eat worms.

I was suspicious immediately. Be abidingly suspicious of any teenage male who is mannerly, respectful, and absent attitude. That kid is up to something. Guaranteed

an iron law of warfare. No matter how clever you are at finding a new tool, your opponent will come up with a counter long before that can possibly be convenient for you.