Empire Of The Vampire Quotes

Give me a shot to remember And you can take all the pain away from me A kiss and I will surrender The sharpest lives are the deadliest to lead A light to burn all the empires So bright the sun is ashamed to rise and be And I'm in love with all of those vampires So you can leave like the sane abandoned me

A life without books is a life not lived.

There’s no misery so deep as one you face by yourself. No nights darker than ones you spend alone. But you can learn to live with any weight. Your scars grow thick enough, they become armour.

You’re past is stone, but your future clay. And you decide the shape of the life you’ll make.

When there’s little you can do, do what little you can.

Mene mene tekel upsharin,' Jace said with a faint smile. 'You don't recognize it? It's from the Bible, vampire. The old one. That's your book, isn't it?' Just because I'm Jewish doesn't mean I've memorized the Old Testament.' It's the Writing on the Wall. "God hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to an end; thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." It's a portent of doom--it means the end of an empire.

Ask me not if God exists, but why he's such a prick.

Put a man in a room for a hundred years with a thousand books, and he’ll know a million truths. Put him in a room for a year with silence, and he’ll know himself.

If we spend all our lives in darkness, is it any wonder when darkness starts to live in us?

Aim your heart at the fucking world.

Astrid was just as fierce a scholar as I was a swordsman. A girl who wielded books like blades.

De León. Ye live." '"Sadly." '"How?" he hissed. '"God didn't want me. And the devil was afraid to open the door.

You're sailing awfully close to the shores of a little island most call None of Your Fucking Business.

My friends are the hill I die on.

Hearts only bruise. They never break.

Too much hate will burn a man to cinders, Chevalier. Oui. But at least he'll die warm

No sin so dangerous as the sin that is chosen. No sin so glorious as the sin that is shared.

My mama knew herself, and there’s a fearsome power in that. Knowing exactly who you are and exactly what you’re capable of. Most folks would call it arrogance, I suppose. But most folks are fucking fools.

There are springs in the mind from which others cannot drink.

What a world this would be, were it not held wholly and solely in the grip of stubborn old men.

We only die if we are forgotten. Burn bright. Burn brief. But burn.

See, I never understood that. Why pride is looked on as an evil. You work hard at something you're not born good at? Damn right you should be fucking proud.

I will not give my heart to a coward. I will give it to a lion.

What kind of hero are you?' Gabriel laughed, shaking his head. 'Who the fuck told you I was a hero?

It's in silence we know ourselves, vampire. It's in stillness we hear the questions that truly matter, scratching like baby birds on the eggshells of our eyes. Who am I? What do I want? What have I become? Truth is, the questions you hear in the quiet are always the most terrifying, because most people never take the time to listen to the answers. They dance. And they sing. And they fight. And they fuck. And they drown, filling their gullets with piss and their lungs with smoke and their heads with shit so they never have to learn the truth of who the fuck they are. Put a man in a room for a hundred years with a thousand books, and he’ll know a million truths. Put him in a room for a year with silence, and he’ll know himself.

The book was near falling to pieces, but the lettering was still visible, faint and faded, oui, but still there. This, too, was a strange immortality. Poems, stories, ideas, frozen forever in time. The simple wonder of books.

In death and truth I see, through blood and fire, now dance with me.

But you're not a weak and foolish girl. No. I'm a fucking queen.

A smile curled Jean-François’s lips. “I had heard you were a man of ill temper.” “Interesting. I hadn’t heard of you at all.

It matters not what you hold faith in. But you must hold faith in something.

I've stood in the houses of the holy, priest. I've read his scripture cover to cover, I've sung praises to his name, and I tell you now and tell you true: One hand holding a sword is worth ten thousand clasped in prayer.

When your whole world is going to hell, all you need is someone who sounds like he knows the way.

When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.

As the Roman Empire came to its close, all the old gods of the pagan world were seen as demons by the Christians who rose. It was useless to tell them as the centuries passed that their Christ was but another God of the Wood, dying and rising, as Dionysus or Osiris had done before him, and that the Virgin Mary was in fact the Good Mother again enshrined. Theirs was a new age of belief and conviction, and in it we became devils, detached from what they believed, as old knowledge was forgotten or misunderstood.

It is my empress's will to know the whole of your tale.' Gabriel reached into his battered britches, fished about under the monster's stare. Finally, he retrieved a tarnished royale from his pocket. 'Here.' 'What is that for?' Jean-François demanded. 'I want you to take this coin to market, and buy me a fuck to give.

What if all those strange and unexplainable bends in history were the result of supernatural interference? At which point I asked myself, what's the weirdest most eccentric historical phenomenon of them all? Answer:the Great British Empire. Clearly, one tiny little island could only conquer half the known world with supernatural aid. Those absurd Victorian manners and ridiculous fashions were obviously dictated by vampires. And, without a doubt, the British army regimental system functions on werewolf pack dynamics.

Gareth's eyes slipped open. “You make me nervous when you do that.” “Do what?” “Brood. Your brooding is rather loud.” “Oh please. I was hardly—” His eyebrow rose. “Fine. I was brooding. It's not like you don't.” “Mine is inherent to my romantic nature. Cloaks and castles.” Adele threw up her hands. “That's it. You are forbidden to look at any more cheap books about yourself.

life without books is a life not lived, Dior. There’s a magik like no other to be found in them. To open a book is to open a door – to another place, another time, another mind. And usually, mademoiselle, it’s a mind far sharper than your own.

There's no misery so deep as one you face by yourself. No nights darker than ones you spend alone. But you can learn to live with any weight. Your scars grow thick enough, they become armour.

This is not the way stories are told, Silversaint.' 'I know. But I'm hoping the suspense will kill you.

Fuck,’ I sighed. “‘Fuuuck,’ Dior said. “‘… Fuuuck?’ I asked. “‘Fuuuuuuuuck,’ he nodded.

I'm in this relationship for the capes and castles.

There's a difference between those who swim with the flood and those drown fighting it. And it's name is is wisdom.

If death is so glorious, how is it meted so cheaply and so often by the most worthless of men?

A girl who wielded books like blades.

In justice and hope, no hope there be, In mercy and bliss, no bliss for thee, In death and truth, no truth I see, Through blood and fire, now dance with me.

The only thing worse than a fool is a fool who thinks himself wise.

I'm something of a bastard on the best of days. And that day was hardly my best.' Jean-François's gaze roamed Gabriel, toe to crown. 'Nor this one, I fear?' Gabriel tapped an empty leather pouch at his belt. 'Behold the purse in which I keep my fucks for what you think of me.

It's a fool who plays at the precipice. But only the prince of fools blames another when he falls.

But music, de León…” The vampire leaned forward, animated for perhaps the first time since their conversation began. “Music is a truth beyond telling. A bridge between strangest souls. Two men who speak not a word of each other’s tongues may yet feel their hearts soar likewise at the same refrain. Gift a man the most important of lessons, he may forget it amorrow. Gift him a beautiful song, and he shall hum it ’til the day the crows make a castle of his bones.

The road is black ahead,’ I told her. ‘And it’s hard to keep walking when you can’t see the ground beneath your feet. But that’s what courage is. The will to keep walking in the darkness.

How many hearts have been made complete by words so small as I do? How many more have been shattered with a breath as tiny as It’s over? Little sounds that reshape or unmake your entire world, like great spells of old to redraw the very lines by which you see yourself and all else about you. Two little words.

Let me tell you, if the Almighty offered me the platter of shit that constitutes divine motherhood and yet denied me the pleasure of a good roll in the hay beforehand, I'd have told him to go fuck himself.

„God go with you.” '"I'd rather he minded his own fucking business, if it's all the same.

The right book is worth a hundred blades

Fuck me,” I breathed. ‘“The Testaments name sodomy a deadly sin, so I’d rather not.” Talon offered a brief smile. “But you’re very pretty, de León, and I appreciate the offer.

They say the best revenge is living well, but there's still a lot to be said for dancing beneath the blood moons in a cloak made of your enemy's skin.

You can try to fill it with whatever you like. Wine. Women. Work. In the end, a hole is still a hole.

When your dark mother and pale mistress set you this task... Did you think she was locking me in here with you, or you in here with me?

Where are w-we, Gabriel? '"We're in shit, Ash," I hissed. 'Ohhh. Just another day, another d-day, then?

HERE’S A TRUTH about sword fighting, coldblood: Even if you’re bad at it, when the person you’re fighting doesn’t have one? You’re still going to be pretty good.

This world won’t give you what you want just because you asked nicely, girl. Not respect. Not love. Not peace. You get what you earn. You eat what you kill.

There’s no misery so deep as one you face by yourself. No nights darker than ones you spend alone. But you can learn to live with any weight. Your scars grow thick enough, they become armor.

From holy cup comes holy light; The faithful hand sets world aright. And in the Seven Martyrs’ sight, Mere man shall end this endless night.

No fear. Only fury.

The graveyards of the world are full of fools who thought of fear as anything but a friend.

That’s the awful part about it: the worst days of your life start out just like any other.

Hundreds of years later, historians and scholars would look back upon this moment. This decision that, one day, would topple an empire. What a strange choice, they would whisper. Why would he do this? Why, indeed. After all, vampires know better than anyone how important it is to protect their hearts. And love, understand, is sharper than any stake.

That girl had a thousand smiles. A smile cruel as winter wind, that cut you down to shivering bone. A smile light as dove's down, just the softest hint of it across her cheek to let you know she was listening as you spoke. A smile that could make you fear, and a smile that could make you cry, and a smile that made you feel like you were the only man alive.

There are three ways men view the women of the world, Gabriel. Enemies to be overcome. Prizes to be won. Or as people. My advice is choose the latter, my love. Lest they begin considering you the former.

I never thought I'd find such peace in simple reading. The words were a kind of magic, taking me by the hand and sweeping me into lands unseen, times unremembered, thoughts unimagined. Through all my years in San Michon, all the blood and sweat and darkling roads I walked, I learned one of my greatest lessons sitting in that Library with those girls in the still of the night. A life without books is a life not lived.

Ein Leben ohne Bücher ist ein nicht gelebtes Leben.

Measure yourself not by where others are, but where you used to be.

It’s a strange truth, but some folk enjoy the notion of owning books more than reading them, and I soon tired of him glowering at my back.

When there's little you can do, do what little you can.

And I knew the colour of want then. And its colour was red.

Besides, who the fuck would want to inherit an earth like this?

Language, like the mouths that hold and release it, is wet & living, each   word is wrinkled with age, swollen with other words, with blood, smoothed by the numberless flesh tongues that have passed across it.   Your language hangs around your neck, a noose, a heavy necklace; each word is empire, each word is vampire and mother.

A life without books is a life not lived, Dior. There’s a magik like no other to be found in them. To open a book is to open a door—to another place, another time, another mind. And usually, mademoiselle, it’s a mind far sharper than your own.

There is a time for grief, and a time for song, and a time to recall with fondness all that has been gone. But there is a time for killing too. There is a time for blood. And a time for rage. And a time to close your eyes and become the thing hell wants you to be. And so. I did.

I felt a wave of nostalgia, that sweet poison seeping into my heart, that vain and selfish desire to dwell among glories of the past, when days were better and simpler, when all the world seemed bright, tinted rose-red in the halls of memory. But it’s a fool who looks with more fondness to the days behind than the ones ahead. And it’s a man drenched in defeat who sings that sad refrain; that things were better then.

Se conocía a sí misma, y hay un poder aterrador en eso. En saber exactamente quién eres y de lo que eres capaz.

To hate the thing that is completing you. To love the thing that is destroying you. What perfect suffering. What hell divine.

How?’ he hissed. “‘God didn’t want me. And the devil was afraid to open the door.

Old age and treachery can always overcome youth and skill.

What kind of hero are you?’ Gabriel laughed, shaking his head. ‘Who the fuck told you I was a hero?

I never walked into anything and found I was simply good at it. The only way I shone at anything in my life was being too much of a stubborn bastard to quit.

Those hurt will hurt in kind. Cruelty is an infection, spread from one victim to the next; an avalanche rolling ever downhill and crashing worst upon those at the bottom of the pile.

It’s only in faerie tales that everything works out for the best with a magik spell or a prince’s kiss. It’s only in storybooks some little bastard picks up a sword and wields it like he was born to it. The rest of us? We have to work our arses off. And we might not ever taste triumph, but at least we dared to fail. We stand apart from those cowards whispering on the sidelines about how the strong did stumble, while never daring to set foot in the ring themselves. Victors are just folk who were never satisfied being vanquished. The only thing worse than finishing last is not beginning at all. And fuck finishing last.

It’s a strange thing, to be a sibling. So much rancor and love. Hate and history. It’s a bond forged in iron, that tie. It takes a great deal of work to sunder it entirely. But it can be done.

And in sight of God and his Seven Martyrs, I do here vow: let the dark know my name and despair. So long as it burns, I am the flame. So long as it bleeds, I am the blade. So long as it sins, I am the saint.

The princess stared wide-eyed after her silent teacher. She lifted the hem of her robe and followed. "Is this your secret geomancer society?" "No. Could you please not say 'secret geomancer society' out loud?

That's the way to wisdom, vampire. The wise man learns more from his enemies than the fool from his friends, but even the fool can learn if his friends are willing to call him one. Surround yourself with folk who confront you. If you're not being challenged, you're not learning anything. If you're the smartest man in the room, you're in the wrong fucking room.

Do your priests not preach from their pulpits of the grace that lies in humility?' Jean-François asked. 'Do they not promise the meek shall inherit the earth?' 'I've lived thirty-five years with the name my mother gave me, coldblood, and never once have I seen the meek inherit anything but the table scraps of the strong.' […] 'Besides, who the fuck would want to inherit an earth like this?

They don’t shut the fuck up. They don’t just sit and listen. It’s in silence we know ourselves, vampire. It’s in stillness we hear the questions that truly matter, scratching like baby birds on the eggshells of our eyes. Who am I? What do I want? What have I become? Truth is, the questions you hear in the quiet are always the most terrifying, because most people never take the time to listen to the answers.

Robart blinked, momentarily thrown off track, but recovered. “I will have my knight returned to me.” Knight? What knight? Oh shoot. I had completely forgotten about the vampire who’d almost chopped the police car in a half. I’d left him in the basement holding cell for almost four hours. I concentrated. The knight was alive and well. He was sitting on the floor meditating. I gave the floor a little push and felt it slide up, carrying the knight with it. “You will find your knight in your quarters.” Robart nodded. His gaze narrowed. “Perhaps if you were less heavy-handed in your treatment of the guests you claim to honor and protect, your inn would have a higher rating.” He did not. Oh yes, yes he did. “Perhaps if you trained the knights under your command to follow simple orders, your House would’ve reached greater prominence within your empire.” Robart locked his jaw. If my smile were any sweeter, you could pour it on pancakes and call it syrup.

My brother the vampire, whose kiss was a slow death sentence, had a stable and loving relationship with a girl who was crazy about him. By contrast, I could barely talk to a woman, at least about anything pertaining to a relationship. Given that my only long-term girlfriends had faked their own death, died, and broken free of enslaving enchantments to end the relationship, the empirical evidence seemed to indicate that he knew something I didn’t. Keep your life tonight, Harry. Complicate it tomorrow.

I said it to the Flower, I'll say it again: There's a solace to be found in sadness. And I understand why ye’d think ye deserve that dark. Easier to find refuge in drink, in rage, to say hell with it all and push everyone away. Because ye think that cold is easier to live with than the pain that could come if ye let the warmth back in, only to be burned again. But that's the fire that lets us know we're alive, Gabriel." ‘I shook my head, two pale shadows now rising at my back. “‘You can't fix a broken blade, Phoebe." “‘But don't ye see? We don't get broken. We’re made broken. We are not whole alone. But if we're blessed, if we're brave, we might find those few whose edges fit against our own. Like pieces of the same puzzle, or shards of the same shattered blade. Those people who, in their own broken way, make our broken edge complete.

See, that divine plan shite is what the pulpit-hucksters feed you when things start to go wrong. After they've passed around the collection plate, of course. When your crops fail or your cancer spreads or whatever else you've begged him for doesn't come to pass. That's the solace they'll offer. It's God's will, they'll tell you. Part of the divine plan. What they don't point out is, if he has a plan? There's no sense praying for anything. If His will be done is the golden rule, then God's going to do what he wants, regardless of how hard you beg him. And imagine, just for a second, the sense of entitlement it takes to ask him for anything in the first place. The fucking ego you'd need to think that this is somehow all for you. What if you ask for something that's not his will? You want him to alter the course of the divine plan? For you? See, that's the grift of it all. That's the genius. You get what you pray for? Huzzah, God fucking loves you. But your prayers go unanswered? Just wasn't part of the plan.

Every day for four weeks, I plucked hairs to etch the number of hollyroot drops in a dose of sanctus into my mind. Anything, everything I could do to remember.' 'You plucked hairs from your head to remember a recipe?' 'Not my head.' The historian glanced down at the silversaint's crotch, one eyebrow raised. Gabriel nodded. 'Every day for four weeks.' 'How many hollyroot drops are in a dose of sanctus?' 'Sixteen,' Gabriel answered immediately. 'Good God Almighty, de León.