“Vulgar languages, especially when native, stand too close to the press of life. Their meanings are too easily warped by our insights and experiences. The sheer otherness of Gilcûnya serves to insulate the semantics of sorcery from the inconstancies of… — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share Image
Everyone thinks they've won the Magical Belief Lottery. Everyone thinks they more or less have a handle on things, that they, as opposed to… — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share Image
I tell you, guilt dwells nowhere but in the eyes of the accuser. This men know even as they deny it, which is why… — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share Image
“When a man possesses the innocence of a child, we call him a fool. When a child possesses the cunning of a man, we… — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share Image
“I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor ... ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury.” — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share
“The vulgar think the God by analogy to man and so worship Him in the form of the Gods. The learned think the God by analogy to principles and so worship Him in the form of Love or Truth. But the wises think the God not at all. They know that thought, which is finite, can only do violence to… — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share
There was such a difference, he thought, between the beauty that illuminated, and the beauty that was illuminated. — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share Image
Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy. — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share Image
“Sorweel: „Then how can we hope to resist him?“ Harweel: „With our swords and our shields. And when those fail us, with spit and curses.“ But the spit and the curses, Sorweel would learn, always came first, accompanied by bold gestures and grand demonstrations. War was an extension of argument, and swords were simply words honed to a blood-letting edge.… — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share
“He struck his own fire, listened to the night wind roar through the trees. Sometimes, when he could see it, he stared at the… — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share Image
“That hope is little more than the premonition of regret. This is the first lesson of history.” — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share Image
“For all things there is a toll. We pay in breaths, and our purse is soon empty.” — R. Scott Bakker Copy Share Image
