Quotes About Survival

They say a man lost in the desert must take such water as he is offered, no matter who it comes from. I

The definition of all right changes with the passing winters, I find. I'm about all right by the standards of the last few days. Twenty years ago I'd have considered this close to death.

A man who'd lasted past his time. A man dragged back for one fight too many. But then, one is one too many.

Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers...

Folk want bread," he said. "Then safety. Then shelter. Freedom's far down the list, and principles far behind that.

The Forest that had been about her all her life, certain as a mountain, was made ashes. The high gable that had stood for two hundred years fallen in ruin. Throvenland was torn apart like smoke on the wind. Nowhere would be safe, ever again.

Fearlessness is a fool's boast, to my mind. The only men with no fear in them are the dead, or the soon to be dead, maybe. Fear teaches you caution, and respect for your enemy, and to avoid sharp edges used in anger. All good things in their place, believe me. Fear can bring you out alive, and that's the very best anyone can hope for from any fight. Every man who's worth a damn feels fear. It's the use you make of it that counts.

Pardon me,' said Glokta, wiping his running eye with a finger, 'but I spent two years in the Emperor's prisons. I daresay, if I had known I'd be there half that long at the start, I would have made a more concerted effort to kill myself.

If there is one thing I have learned in all my many last stands, it is that death is never certain, only… extremely likely.

A man has to bend with the breeze.' The Great Wolf's grin was wider than ever. 'You're a bastard, Clover. But you're my kind of bastard.' Stour's kind of bastard. That was where all his cleverness had got him.

But these were desperate times. And in desperate times, one must sometimes call upon the services of monsters.

What's his story?' asked Yarvi. 'I don't know his name. Nothing, we all call him. When I was first brought to the South Wind he pulled an oar. One night, off the coast of Gettland, he tried to escape. Somehow he got free of his chain and stole a knife. He killed three guards and cut another's knee so he never walked again, and he gave our captain that scar before she and Trigg put a stop to him.' Yarvi blinked at the shambling scrubber. 'All that with a knife?' 'And not a large one.

But a man lost in the desert, as the Gurkish say, must take such water as he is offered.

This is the North," muttered Clover. "Who hasn't killed a friend or two?

Everything frightens me, and it's well that it does. Fear is a good friend to the hunted, it's kept me alive this long. The dead are fearless, and I don't care to join them.

Live long enough, you see everything ruined.

A shifting sea of jabbing weapons, squealing shields, shining metal, bone shattered, blood splattered, furious, terrified faces washing all round him, squirming and wriggling, and he hacked and chopped and split them like a mad butcher going at a carcass.

The Northman chuckled. 'Fearlessness is a fool's boast, to my mind. The only men with no fear in them are the dead, or the soon to be dead, maybe. Fear teaches you caution, and respect for your enemy, and to avoid sharp edges used in anger. All good things in their place, believe me. Fear can bring you out alive, and that's the very best anyone can hope for from any fight. Every man who's worth a damn feels fear. It's the use you make of it that counts.

The King needs money, so he squeezes the nobles. The nobles squeeze their tenants, the tenants squeeze the peasants. Some of them, the old, the weak, the extra sons and daughters, they get squeezed right out the bottom. Too many mouths to feed. The lucky ones make thieves or whores, the rest end up begging.

To fight my enemies I need friends behind me, and I'm clean out of friends. You have to be realistic. It's been a while since my ambitions went beyond getting through each day alive.

A fighting man's a fool that don't keep his weapons clean and ready. Dogman had been over his no more'n an hour before. Still, you won't be killed for checking 'em, while you might be for not doing it.

Someone who'd starved in the camps, who'd lied her way into the hearts and beds of good people, who'd tricked and tortured to betray a cause she halfway believed in for the sake of one she didn't at all, might've felt a little bitter at seeing all this money wasted.

If he did nothing him and Malacus would end up robbed, and more than likely killed. You have to be realistic about these things.

There used to be," she muttered, "but they whip it out of you. They whip you until they're sure there's nothing left." Yulwei stood there, with that pitying look on his face. Strange, how it didn't make her angry any more.