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The Steel Remains
Richard K. Morgan
Top 10 Best Quotes
“When a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased mother has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you only have two basic options. You can smell his breath, take his pulse and check his pupils to see if he's ingested anything nasty, or you can believe him.”
“...the tongues of men are not much leashed by concerns for accuracy or truth.”
“If you don’t know the men at your back by name, don’t be surprised if they won’t follow you into battle. On the other hand, don’t be surprised if they will, either, because there are countless other factors you must take into account. Leadership is a slippery commodity, not easily manufactured or understood.”
“Potential, and the will to deploy it. That's all magic is in the end, you know.”
“...you and I will be dust and half-remembered tales before they even start to build that city. But it will come, and when it does, this sword will still be there to see it. Kiriath steel — built to harm, built to last. When all the damage it’s done and the grief it’s caused have been forgotten, even by the gods, when the Kiriath themselves have passed into discredited myth, this murderous fucking ... thing ... will hang unused, and harmless, and gaped at by children. That’s how it ends, Gil. With no one to remember, or care, or understand what this thing could do when you set it free.”
“You should have heard the boatman who brought me up here from the Glades. Fire in the northern sky, lights in the marshes, a black dog heard barking through the night. Doesn’t occur to anyone to wonder how exactly you can tell it’s a black dog just from the fucking bark it makes.”
“Everyone's afraid of what they don't understand," Ringil said quietly.”
“Books — the warm, leather-skinned weight of them in your hands, the way they smelled when you lifted them close to your face. The unfeasibly heart-jolting shock once, as a tome fell heavily open at some much-visited page, divided itself neatly in two blocky halves along the spine — and you thought, guiltily, that you’d broken it.”
“You know nothing of me.” Through clenched teeth. “Nothing. You’ve fucked me, that’s all. Well, that’s a crowded hole you’re in, darling. And us humans, we’re a lying, dissembling bunch, remember. Doesn’t pay to trust us between the sheets any more than anywhere else.”
“Well.” Ringil gave the Throne Eternal captain another brittle little smile. “You know, the thing about fucking is, it’s a lot less wear and tear than trying to kill each other with bits of steel. And it’s the sort of thing that does tend to lead to confidences and favours if you play it right. Ask any woman, she’ll tell you that. Unless of course your experiences in that direction are limited, as, come to think of it, yours probably are, to whores and rape.”
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Book Keywords:
leadership-vs-management, knowledge-and-truth, experiences-and-graces, leadership, fear, human-nature, understanding, legend, books, sword, memory, magic