All lives are tales. Some spread, and grow in the telling. Others are just told between us and the gods, muttered back and forth behind our days, but those tales grow too and shake us just as fierce.

You got responsibilities when you’re a leader. You got a responsibility not to kill too many of your men. Or who’re you going to lead?

Few things worth having can be got easily.

The biggest lies we save for ourselves.

It never pays to walk blindly. Especially not in your own castle where familiarity hides so much - even when we have the eyes to see.

And when pain bites, men bargain. Boys too. We twist and turn, we plead and beg, we offer our tormentors what he wants so that the hurting will stop. And when there is no torturer to placate, no hooded man with hot irons and tongs, just a burn you can't escape, we bargain with God, or ourselves, depending on the size of our egos.

Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held to be a character flaw.