Evil is relative…You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.
-Glen Cook The Black Company
There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.
-Glen Cook The Black Company
I cannot conceive of gods who would give a damn about humanity’s frothy carryings-on. I mean, logically, beings of that order just wouldn’t. But maybe there is a force for greater good, created by our unconscious minds conjoined, that becomes an independent power greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe, being a mind-thing, it is not time-bound. Maybe it can see everywhere and everywhen and move pawns so that what seems to be today’s victory becomes the cornerstone of tomorrow’s defeat.
-Glen Cook The Black Company
He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That we are what determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which there is no escape simply by being ourselves and interacting with other selves.
-Glen Cook The White Rose
There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronizing wonder at the naiveté of the youth who dreamed them.
-Glen Cook The White Rose
Combat is fear and management of fear far more than it is organized murder. Those who manage fear best will seize the day.
-Glen Cook She is the Darkness
We are all the sum total of our pasts, good and evil.
-Glen Cook She is the Darkness
I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled toward absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world.
-Glen Cook Shadow Games
More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way. Few villains think they are villains.
-Glen Cook Dreams of Steel
Oh, ‘twould be marvelous if the world and its moral questions were like some game board, with plain black players and white, and fixed rules, and nary a shade of grey.
-Glen Cook Shadows Linger
Being an old cynic myself I have strong notions about the true value of human gratitude. It is a currency whose worth plunges by the hour.
-Glen Cook Soldiers Live
The entirety of human experiences argues on behalf of suspicion of strangers laden with weapons.
-Glen Cook Soldiers Live
The past is… a hall of mirrors that reflect the needs of souls observing from the present.
-Glen Cook Soldiers Live
The thing that you know to be true is the lie that will kill you.
-Glen Cook Soldiers Live
Mornings are wonderful! The only drawback is that they come at such an inconvenient time of day!
-Glen Cook Sweet Silver Blues
Other Glen Cook sites:
Glen
Cook: The Fan Page - Bibliography, descriptions of novels, and a
mailing list.
The Official Glen Cook
Bibliography - Novels, Work in progress, Stories in Limbo, Non-fiction, and
Short work..
Glen Cook:
The Black Company Homepage - About the books, the Ten Who Were Taken, and
even the rules of Tonk.