Scott Lynch

I thought we were celebrating being richer and cleverer than everyone else!

I sometimes think that 'friend' is just a word I use for all the people I haven't murdered yet.

You want a lesson, boy? If you find yourself being born, climb back in as quick as you can, because life's a bottomless feast of shit.

Advice," Doña Vorchenza chuckled. "Advice. The years play a sort of alchemical trick, transmuting one's mutterings to a state of respectability. Give advice at forty and you're a nag. Give it at seventy and you're a sage.

Now, it__ undeniably true that male writers (including yours truly) are generally and commercially allowed to write about __irl stuff_ without being penalized for doing so. In part this is the same old shit it__ always been ... I__e said before that men who write mostly about men win prizes for revealing the human condition, while women who write about both men and women are filed away as writing __omens_ issues._ Likewise, in fantasy, the imprimatur of a dude somehow makes stuff like romance, relationship drama, introspection, and adorable animal companions magically not girly after all.In a sense, we male fantasists are allowed to be like money launderers for girl coo

I__ not beholden to the confirmation of your prejudices; to be perfectly frank, the prospect of confining the female characters in my story to placid, helpless secondary places in the narrative is so goddamn boring that I would rather not write at all.

Gods, I love this place," Locke said, drumming his fingers against his thighs. "Sometimes I think this whole city was put here simply because the gods must adore crime. Pickpockets rob the common folk, merchants rob anyone they can dupe, Capa Barsavi robs the robbers and the common folk, the lesser nobles rob nearly everyone, and Duke Nicovante occasionally runs off with his army and robs the shit out of Tal Verarr or Jerem, not to mention what he does to his own nobles and his common folk.

What do you do,' said Jean, 'with, ah, "ungifted" children when you have them?''Cherish them and raise them, you imbecile. Most of them end up working for us, in Karthain and elsewhere. What did you think we'd do, burn them on a pyre?''Forget I asked

A troupe learns to play like we all learn to screw, stumbling and jostling until everything's finally in the right place.

What do you think of the old boy?" said Jean."He's got a strangely sunny view of ten years of defeat", said Locke, "but if I get killed in the next six weeks, I want him to speak at my funeral.

You have to be a dead-eyed dirty-souled maniac to want to spend your extended life trading punches with other maniacs. Once you've seized that power, there's no getting off the merry-go-round. You fight like hell just to hold on or you get shoved off.

Crooked Warden, I will fear no darkness for the night is yours. Your night is my cloak, my shield, my escape from those who hunt to feed the noose. I will fear no evil, for you have made the night my friend.

My name's Jean Tannen, and I'm the ambush.

A boy may be as disagreeable as he pleases, but when a girl refuses to crap sunshine on command, the world mutters darkly about her moods.

Crooked Warden, I will fear no darkness for the night is yours," muttered Locke, pointing the first two fingers of his left hand into the darkness. The Dagger of the Thirteenth, a thief's gesture against evil. "Your night is my cloak, my shield, my escape from those who hunt to feed the noose. I will fear no evil, for you have made the night my friend.""Bless the Benefactor," said Jean, squeezing Locke's left forearm. "Peace and profit to his children.

Her eyes [were] like the sudden plunge to blue depths beyond a continental shelf.

Locke sighed.'So this is winning,' he said.'It is,' replied Jean. 'It can go fuck itself,' said Locke.

Maybe the one real advantage to getting older is that you have the time to pull your head a little bit farther out of your ass.