Brent Quotes

Do you know what punishments I've endured for my crimes, my sins? None. I am proof of the absurdity of men's most treasured abstractions. A just universe wouldn't tolerate my existence.

I'm not dreaming this, am I?" he asked. Dehvi lifted an eyebrow. "There's only one way to know for sure," he said. What's that?" Go piss in the woods. If you feel wet and warm afterward, wake up.

..because the only kind of love I have to offer is stupid and blind and so deep and powerful that I feel like I'm cracking just to hold it in.

Relationships are ropes. Love is a noose. - Durzo Blint

Assassination is an art, milord. And I am the city's most accomplished artist.

Why is it, my shadow-striding friend, that we don't fear dreams? We lose consciousness, lose control, things happen with no apparent logic and abiding by no apparent rules.... We don't fear dreams, but we do fear madness, and death terrifies us.

You might want to think twice before you try to use a man's conscience against him. It may turn out he doesn't have one.

The only problem with seeing people you know is that they know you.

Love is a fragile, corruptible thing. And yet I have seen it evince a curious strength. It is beyond any comprehension Love is a weakness that once in a great while triumphs over strength.

A man’s greatest treasures are his illusions - Durzo Blint

Words were another sword for the man who wielded them well.

The perfect killer has no friends. Only targets.

king: "You're...you're shit! You shitting, shitting shit!" "Your Majesty," Durzo said gravely. "A man of your stature's cursing vocabulary ought to extend beyond a tedious reiteration of the excreta that fills the void between his ears.

You'd be surprised at what you'd do to stay alive.

Moments of beauty sustain us through hours of ugliness.

What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.

Life is empty. Life is worthless. When we take a life, we aren't taking anything of value.- Durzo Blint

Love is not a whim. Love is not a flower that fades with a few fleeting years. Love is a choice wedded to action, my husband, and I choose you, and I will choose you every day for the rest of my life.

The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. I’ll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fiction—until he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define “literature”. The Latin root simply means “letters”. Those letters are either delivered—they connect with an audience—or they don’t. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but that’s because there are trashy facets of humanity. What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.

Why did women always believe that talking about a problem would fix it? Some issues were corpses. Hot air made them fester and rot and spread their disease to everything else. Better to bury it and move on.

Dying well is easy,it only takes a moment of courage. It’s living well that I couldn’t do. What’s death compared to that.

A wet boy has a deader, an assassin has a target, because assassins sometimes miss.

Let me make this real simple. You will not break me. The hole will not break me. I will not break. I will not be broken.

How can one love the light and live in darkness?

If you are not free to say no, your yes is meaningless.

A few months ago you assassinated a man who called himself a god; now you're going after a goddess in truth. Unless you can figure out a way to kill continents, after this you're going to have to retire.

Life is meaningless, when we take a life we take nothing of value.

There's no guarantee that justice will win out or that a noble sacrifice will make any difference. But when it does, there's something that still swells my chest. There's magic in that.... It tells me that's the way things are supposed to be.

You will find no answers here, just choices.

Evil is simple and empty. Evil has no mysterious depths. We stare into a dark hole and fill it with our fears, but it is only a hole.

It's better that the innocent should live than that the guilty die

You’ve got this whole knight-in-shining-armor vibe going on.” I shake my head. “My armor was tarnished a long time ago, Brent.” “A knight in tarnished armor is still a knight.

Bewildered as he might be, sometimes a man's highest calling is simply to stand, and hug.

You have the maturity of a 14-year-old boy!“ Kennedy hisses. "And you have the chest of one.

Delusional people tend to believe in what they're doing.

You're all trying to figure out what went wrong inside my head. Fucking idiots. You'll never crack the code that's inside my head. You'll never get into my castle. You'll never even get past the gate.

My question is, do you believe in an evil possessed of its own purity? or does every act intend some good?...

When You don't know what to do, just do whatever comes next and go from there.

You’ll come with us,” she said. “Sure,” Gavin said. “It wasn’t a request.” “Yes it was,” Gavin said. “When you don’t have power to compel obedience, by definition you’re making a request.

When you don't know what to do, do what's right and do what's in front of you. But not necessarily what's right in front of you.

The perfect killer has no conscience.

Do you know why you feel destined for something greater?” “Why?” Kip asked, quiet, hopeful. “Because you’re an arrogant little shit.

The God gives simpler problems to lesser men.

You don't need to like reality, only be strong enough to face it

The true story of every person in this world is not the story you see, the external story. The true story of each person is the journey of his or her heart.

Your Majesty,” Durzo said gravely. “A man of your stature’s cursing vocabulary ought to extend beyond a tedious reiteration of the excreta that fills the void between his ears.” - Durzo Blint

We are the stories we tell about ourselves. But when those stories are lies, we are the most surprised of all.

If you looked busy, you could get away with almost anything.

Will covers a multitude of flaws, just as love covers a multitude of sins.

I don't want any part of this. The whole thing kinda freaked me out. I'm sure girls always do what you tell them because you're hot, Brent, but I'm just not that interested." His head perked up with a wide smiled. "You think I'm hot?

Maybe when you were born on the top of the mountain you could pretend the mountain didn't matter, but those who climbed it and those born at its base who could never climb at all knew differently.

Elene gasped and sat up. "Kylar Thaddeus Stern!" Kylar giggled. "Thaddeus? That's a good one. I knew a Thaddeus once." "So did I. He was a blind idiot." "Really?" Kylar said, his eyes dancing. "The one I knew was famous for his gigantic-" "Kylar!" Elene interrupted, motioning toward Uly. "His gigantic what?" Uly asked. "Now you did it." Elene said, "His gigantic what, Kyler?" "Feet. And you know what they say about big feet." He winked lasciviously at Elene. "What?" Uly asked. "Big Shoes," Kylar said.

This world has only two kinds of people: villains and smiling villains.

You have to be a little bad to make history.

Put on some armor. Just remember what's armor and what's you, so when it's time to take it off, you can.

Assassination is an art, milord, and I am the city’s most accomplished artist - Durzo Blint

Light cannot be chained.

Just because it's a dream doesn't mean it's a lie.

I am Sa’kagé a lord of shadows. I claim the shadows that the Shadow may not. I am the strong arm of deliverance. I am Shadowstrider. I am the Scales of Justice. I am He-Who-Guards-Unseen. I am Shadowslayer. I am Nameless. The coranti shall not go unpunished. My way is hard but I serve unbroken. In ignobility nobility. In shame honor. In darkness light. I will do justice and love mercy. Until the king returns I shall not lay my burden down.” --(Durzo Blint to Jorses Alkestes, quoted to Skylar at the edge of Ezra's Forest.)

...if reality is hard and flat and unjust, then it's better to adjust to what really is than to complain that it isn't what you wish. That was what made me lose faith..... But having lost it, soon I doubted my lack of faith. There were niggling hints of meaning everywhere.

Sometimes to love is easy, but to accept love is hard.

We become the masks we wear.

If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.

A wolf can be a wolfhound, son, but it can never be a lapdog.

And what fun is it being a genius if no one appreciates you?

The master who fears the choices his people will make enough to take those choices away isn't worth serving.

The perfect killer has no identity.

What happens if you do nothing, nothing, there's a price and a terrible freedom to that

If you worry about what everyone is trying to do, you become a spectator and not a player.

Truth doesn't depend on your belief in it.

These kids are all trying so hard to be weird. I'm genuinely weird, so I can spot the effort a mile away.

If embarrassment were a muscle, I'd be huge.

I’m pregnant.” Brent dropped his bag on the driveway. “What?” “I’m pregnant and you almost got blown up, you ass,” Hayden said shakily. “I’m never speaking to you again.” He went toward her slowly, laying a reverent hand on her belly. “There could be a mini-duchess in here?” His exhale sounded shaky. “Holy shit.

Might doesn’t make right. Might makes reality.

I regretted that I hadn't turned myself into the kind of man that you could be with. That it wouldn't be just for me to be with you, even if you wanted me. Our lives started in the same shit hole, Elene, but somehow you've turned into you, and I've turned into this. I don't like what I've done. I don't like who I've become. You don't deserve a fairy tale? I don't deserve another chance, but I'm asking you for one. You're afraid that love is too risky? I've seen what happens when you don't risk it. [...] I'm willing to risk it to see the world through your eyes.

Love is a madness. Love is Failer - Durzo Blint

What happens when you strip away all the masks a man wears and you find not a face beneath them but nothing at all?

one doesn't interrupt a beautiful girl unless one is going to be funny.

Dad, one of my first memories is of sharing my worry with you about the space shuttle poking holes in the atmosphere and letting out all of Earth's air.

Life is empty. Life is meaningless. When we take a life, we arn't taking anything of value. Wetboys are killers. Thats all we do. Thats all we are. There are no poets in the bitter business.

That’s it. That is fucking it. I stand up, grab Anna by the waist and, while dragging her to the bedroom, say over my shoulder to Brent, “If you can answer the door when her brother gets here, we’d appreciate it. Don’t bother us for the next hour, two if Anna’s as insatiable as usual. You may want to turn on the television to drown out the noise!” I push a laughing Anna into the bedroom and slam the door behind us.  

This is why there are few prophets. We end up dead a lot. The truth is offensive to men who love darkness.

Dangerous knowledge is often hidden under ponderous grammar and obscurantist vocabulary.

I was a bad child. Fortunately, I’ve come a long way since then. Now I’m a bad man.

That's the burden of leadership, Logan: making the choice when none of the choices are good.

It was no true prayer to beg forgiveness while choosing to sin.

The truth was, Azoth hated Azoth. Azoth was a coward, passive, weak, afraid, disloyal. Azoth had hesitated. Master Blint didn’t know it, but the poisons on the needle had killed Azoth. He was Kylar now, and Kylar would be everything Azoth hadn’t dared to be.

when you deal with human beings, never count on logic or consistency.

Hope is the great deceiver. Hope is the piper who leads us sleepy to our slaughter.

Look at your mistakes long enough to learn from them, then put them behind you.

You damn fool. You realize, even if all your assumptions are correct-even then, you still have to steal the world's most coveted sword from the world's safest place then be pursued by the ultimate hunter until you reach the heart of an enemy country in the middle of a war in which any side will happily kill you as a traitor, a spy, a wytch, or all three?" "I thought you'd like it.

How did I dance with a guy who's never heard of feminism?" "I've heard of it, but that doesn't mean a woman can do everything a man can do," he goaded. I went to smack him on the back of his head, but he ducked with a snicker."I'm learning," he informed me. "How did I ever consider dating such a violent girl?" "We're both lucky we got out early before we really knew each other." "Oh yes, good thing neither one of is still interested in the other," Brent said with a playful grin.

Before everything, I used to do this thing when I was upset-I used to take all my feelings and push them down inside me. It was like they were garbage and I was compacting it to get more in. I felt like I could keep pushing all my feelings down into my socks and I wouldn't have to worry about them. I don't think I do that anymore.

I was surprised that every single person I talked to had a story about how depression had affected their lives. Carmelita Gamboa, a teenager in Michigan, later wrote to me, "The sad thing is, after a while, it starts to feel like home". It does, doesn't it?

Don’t judge a man by what he says his ideals are, judge him by what he does. Look at what the Color Prince has done. They’re wrong, Teia. They’re liars and murderers. It doesn’t mean everything we do is right. It doesn’t mean our house doesn’t need a thorough cleaning. I just don’t think we need to burn it to the ground to do it.

I guess its time you officially met the lost boys," I said to Daniel. "Lost boys? You mean like that old Kiefer Sutherland movie? "What? No, I mean like Peter Pan and the lost boys." "Is she calling us fairies?" Asked Slade. "No," Brent said. "She means the lost boys that never wanted to grow up, and got into mischief with Peter Pan." "Still sounds like fairies to me." Slade crossed his tattooed arms in front of his chest. "Still sounds like that Kiefer Sutherland movie to me." Daniel smirked. "We were in the play together, like, seven years ago. You were mad because my mom made you wear tights, but you wanted to be a pirate." Daniel held his hand up. "Partial amnesia here, remember? I must have blocked out any and all recollections associations with said tights." Brent, Zach, and Ryan laughed. Slade almost cracked a smile. ~ Grace, Daniel, and The Lost Boys

I’ll spend my life training just for the moment I have my chance at you. I’ll wait until you think I’ve forgotten today. I’ll wait until you think it was just a dumb guild rat’s threat. After I’m a master, you’ll jump at shadows for a while. But after you jump a dozen times and I’m not there, you won’t jump just once, and that’s when I’ll be there. I don’t care if you kill me at the same time. I’ll trade my life for yours.

Life is just a series of peaks and troughs, and you don't whether you're in a trough until you're climbing out, or on a peak until you're coming down. And that's it, you know, you never know what's round the corner. But it's all good. "If you want the rainbow you've got to put up with the rain". Do you know which "philosopher" said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she's just a big pair of tits.

That pain you feel," Master Blint said almost gently, "is the pain of abandoning a delusion. The delusion is meaning, Kylar. There is no higher purpose. There are no gods. No arbiters of right and wrong. I don't ask you to like reality. I only ask you to be strong enough to face it. There is nothing beyond this. There is only the perfection we attain by becoming weapons, as strong and merciless as a sword. There is no essential good in living. Life is nothing in itself. It's a place marker that proves who's winning, and we are the winners. We are always the winners. There is nothing by the winning. Even winning means nothing. We win because it's an insult to lose. The ends don't justify the means. The means don't justify the ends. There is no one to justify to. There is no justification.

These are lines from my asteroid-impact novel, Regolith: Just because there are no laws against stupidity doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be punished. I haven’t faced rejection this brutal since I was single. He smelled trouble like a fart in the shower. If this was a kiss of gratitude, then she must have been very grateful. Not since Bush and Cheney have so few spent so much so fast for so long for so little. As a nympho for mind-fucks, Lisa took to politics like a pig to mud. She began paying men compliments as if she expected a receipt. Like the Aerosmith song, his get-up-and-go just got-up-and-went. “You couldn’t beat the crap out of a dirty diaper!” He embraced his only daughter as if she was deploying to Iraq. She was hotter than a Class 4 solar flare! If sex was a weapon, then Monique possessed WMD I haven’t felt this alive since I lost my virginity. He once read that 95% of women fake organism, and the rest are gay. Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but ugly is universal. Why do wives fart, but not girlfriends? Adultery is sex that is wrong, but not necessarily bad. The dinosaurs stayed drugged out, drooling like Jonas Brothers fans. Silence filled the room like tear gas. The told him a fraction of the truth and hoped it would take just a fraction of the time. Happiness is the best cosmetic, He was a whale of a catch, and there were a lot of fish in the sea eager to nibble on his bait. Cheap hookers are less buck for the bang, Men cannot fall in love with women they don’t find attractive, and women cannot fall in love with men they do not respect. During sex, men want feedback while women expect mind-reading. Cooper looked like a cow about to be tipped over. His father warned him to never do anything he couldn’t justify on Oprah. The poor are not free -- they’re just not enslaved. Only those with money are free. Sperm wasn’t something he would choose on a menu, but it still tasted better than asparagus. The crater looked alive, like Godzilla was about to leap out and mess up Tokyo. Bush follows the Bible until it gets to Jesus. When Bush talks to God, it’s prayer; when God talks to Bush, it’s policy. Cheney called the new Miss America a traitor – apparently she wished for world peace. Cheney was so unpopular that Bush almost replaced him when running for re-election, changing his campaign slogan to, ‘Ain’t Got Dick.’ Bush fought a war on poverty – and the poor lost. Bush thinks we should strengthen the dollar by making it two-ply. Hurricane Katrina got rid of so many Democratic voters that Republicans have started calling her Kathleen Harris. America and Iraq fought a war and Iran won. Bush hasn’t choked this much since his last pretzel. Some wars are unpopular; the rest are victorious. So many conservatives hate the GOP that they are thinking of changing their name to the Dixie Chicks. If Saddam had any WMD, he would have used them when we invaded. If Bush had any brains, he would have used them when we invaded. It’s hard for Bush to win hearts and minds since he has neither. In Iraq, you are a coward if you leave and a fool if you stay. Bush believes it’s not a sin to kill Muslims since they are going to Hell anyway. And, with Bush’s help, soon. In Iraq, those who make their constitution subservient to their religion are called Muslims. In America they’re called Republicans. With great power comes great responsibility – unless you’re Republican.