There is something brittle in me that will break before it bends. Perhaps if the [the enemy] had brought a smaller army I might have had the sense to run. But he overdid it.
Mark LawrenceIt was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war.
Mark LawrenceAs a child there's a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one...each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment.
Mark LawrenceWeโre built of contradictions, all of us. Itโs those opposing forces that give us strength, like an arch, each block pressing the next. Give me a man whose parts are all aligned in agreement and Iโll show you madness. We walk a narrow path, insanity to each side. A man without contradictions to balance him will soon veer off.
Mark Lawrence