Quotes from K.J. Parker

All through our lives, there are witnesses - parents, family, friends, people we work with, people we love and who love us, people who hate us and we hate. One by one they die, until the world seems empty, and eventually there are no independent witnesses to testify our crimes and our achievements. Only we remember them, there's nobody to contradict our version. If we want it to be, it can be the truth.

Not even my not-finest hour. More like fifteen minutes.

There was a lot of Master Prosper. Quite how much of it was necessary, I wouldn't care to say; maybe 60 percent, which was roughly the ratio of genius to bullshit that made up his mental and spiritual being, so probably about that.

You don't have to enjoy your work to be good at it. Frankly, I don't like what I do. It offends me. But I'm the best in the business.

Ladies from fine old Imperial families shouldn't sleep in tents and shit in ditches. Exactly what they were supposed to do all day nobody had quite figured out yet; be put away in cupboards when not in use seemed to be the prevailing opinion.

Farming can't be hard, or farmers couldn't do it.

I figure a friend has the right to offend you at least once.

the fundamental difference between luck and a wheelbarrow; only one of them was designed to be pushed.)

In the end he came to the conclusion that it was like being chased by his own shadow; it could never actually catch him, but it'd never give up trying.

better not to piss off this loathsome and troublesome man, just in case we need him one day. Which is why nobody is ever pleased to see me, and why I never have to buy my own drinks.

Still, it was better than sitting around playing cards waiting to have your throat cut.

I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn't work if you push it.

If there's a truth and nobody knows it, is it still true? Or is it like a light burning in a locked, shuttered house that nobody will ever get to see?

Granted, I told Her, that your grand design is undoubtedly something very nasty and bad, eventually, in the long term. But you're immortal and I'm not, so if I stop you now, you'll just wait till I'm dead and start all over again, so really, what's the point in me interfering?

That's the thing about belief, you can't make yourself do it. It's like falling asleep or being in love. You can lie there all night desperately wanting to go to sleep, and the more you want the more it doesn't happen. You can really, really want to believe, but if you don't you just don't.

Mercy isn't fair, it means someone getting away with what he did because the Boss feels sorry for him. Justice is fair. Justice puts people in prison. Mercy lets them out again. Of course mercy isn't fair. It's breaking all the rules.

it's not the despair that destroys you, it's the hope.

Collaborations. (Good word. Two artists collaborate on a masterpiece. Traitors collaborate with the enemy.)

Seventy years ago they made a bit of a stir at the Echmen court when a political dissident sought refuge with them and the Echmen demanded his extradition. What they got was the dissident's head, perfectly preserved in a jar of wild honey. I happen to like honey, but not as much as that.

At the time, each time round, I thought I was doing the right thing – no, I was doing the right thing. At every turn, all I wanted was to be a good man, honourable, putting others ahead of myself. And this is where I've brought you all to, by doing the right thing. I guess that's the way it's got to be, with me. Everything I do turns bad on me, and I've never knowingly done anything wrong, in the small part of my life that I can remember.

Ah well." Gignomai turned slowly round. "It's not often commented on, but when you stop and think, mercy is the biggest injustice of them all.

If there's a hell, I truly believe, it's getting exactly what you've always wanted.

the exceptionally profound is always, by definition, basic and mundane.

the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn't work if you push it.