You can be the dead fish. I'll be the old stick
Everybody has felt at one time or another that everyone else in the world had a better shot than they did, so when you engage that, you engage the reader, and I think you create a character that brings the reader more fully into the story.
Diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power.
One had a knife. But I had a staff and was trained to use it.
I never confuse the cost of something with its value
I thought we had lost you. I thought we'd done something worse than let you die.' His old arms were tight and strong about me. I was kind to the old man. I did not tell him they had.