R. Scott Bakker Quotes

History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.

You can count the bruises on your heart easily enough, but numbering sins is a far tricker matter. Men are eternally forgetting for their benefit. They leave it to the World to remeber, and to the Outside to call them to harsh accout. One hundred Heavens . . . for one thousand Hells.

There was nothing the ignorant prized more than the ignorance of others.

Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy.

Darkness shields as much as it threatens.

The world has long ceased to be the author of your anguish.

Something ... made him feel small, not in the way of orphans or beggars or children, but in a good way. In the way of souls.

Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic.