Top 60 K.J. Parker Quotes
#1. I'd finally given her what she wanted,
the elixir of eternal youth, effected by the removal of her internal fire (the
catalyst of change) through the agency of death.
K.J. Parker
#2. When you come to rely on the written word, it's time to light the fire with it.
K.J. Parker
#3. It's the way my mind works, when it works at all. Things to do today: settle down, achieve serenity, live happily ever after. Tick the box and move on.
K.J. Parker
#4. The thing about me that seems to puzzle people the most - people who know me, who believe what i tell them - is that I can write the most profound things without actually meaning them.
I can persuade people of things I don't believe myself,or (more usually) simply don't care about
K.J. Parker
#5. Aidi nodded. "Lying to yourself's always a problem," he said.
K.J. Parker
#6. I know she comes across as annoying to begin with," he said. "But once you've got to know her a bit better, you'll find it makes no difference whatsoever.
K.J. Parker
#7. Did you ever hear of a place called Sphoe?
K.J. Parker
#8. A quiet life," Stheno replied. "You wouldn't think it was a lot to ask."
The Hammer
K.J. Parker
#9. There is no absolute right or wrong, good or evil, but there are good manners and common decency.
K.J. Parker
#10. Ladies from fine old Imperial families shouldn't sleep in tents and shit in ditches. Exactly what they were supposed to do all day nobody had quite figured out yet; be put away in cupboards when not in use seemed to be the prevailing opinion.
K.J. Parker
#11. The idea is to make the space around you into a zone where nothing mortal can survive.
K.J. Parker
#12. The fact is, the more you look for something, the likelier you are to find it, even if it isn't actually there; Sooner or later, if you look hard enough, you'll find something.
The trick is then to interpret what you've found as what you were looking for.
K.J. Parker
#13. If the world is a book, are you the hero, or just a walk-on part?
K.J. Parker
#14. It's about keeping the peace, said Rasso from the livery. His choice of words made Marzo want to smile. Rasso had borrowed the phrase from him and, like any man in the colony who borrowed anything, he seemed determined to use it till it fell apart before he was called on to give it back.
K.J. Parker
#15. Patient striving with tolerances in the quiet war against error.
K.J. Parker
#16. Here lies Mago the boxer, of whom it may honestly be said that he never harmed anybody.
K.J. Parker
#17. I don't believe in gods, only in religion.
K.J. Parker
#18. We hold that you can't own anything that four strong men can't lift.
K.J. Parker
#19. Ah". Tzimisces smiled. "Let me guess. Flowery periphrases, back-to-back literary allusions and quotations from thousand-year-old authors. A marked reluctance to use one word when twelve can be jammed in if you sit on the lid.
K.J. Parker
#20. There's an argument for saying that brave men deserve what they get, but it's a serious business forcing cowards to stand in harm's way.
K.J. Parker
#21. If a man exists who is immune to force, even if he's the most blameless anchorite living on top of a column in the middle of the desert, he is beyond government, beyond authority, and cannot be controlled; and that would be intolerable.
K.J. Parker
#22. Why are there never eighty soldiers around when you need them?
K.J. Parker
#23. If there's a truth and nobody knows it, is it still true? Or is it like a light burning in a locked, shuttered house that nobody will ever get to see?
K.J. Parker
#24. No disrespect to the fire god, naturally; blame it instead on His administration, presumably made up of officers of roughly the same level of ability as their terrestial counterparts. That would explain why the mild storm she'd ordered for Oida hit her instead.
K.J. Parker
#25. ... if medical science is geography, then mankind as a species has a map with three towns marked on it and a lot of blank space with drawings of sea serpents.
K.J. Parker
#26. Secretly, deep down, everybody on Earth believes they can write poetry, apart from the members of the Poets' Guild, who know they can't.
K.J. Parker
#27. But how do we know it's really you? I mean, I could put a saucepan on my head and call myself the God of Boiled Dumplings; wouldn't mean I was telling the truth.
K.J. Parker
#28. I figure a friend has the right to offend you at least once.
K.J. Parker
#29. He couldn't even write his name. When he was Emperor, he had to sign documents with a stencil.
K.J. Parker
#30. It's sheer spitefulness to allow mortals to love because everybody dies but the love they cause to be in others doesn't die with them. Therefore love is the cause of the greatest sorrow therefore love is the greatest evil.
K.J. Parker
#31. Phrantzes considered for a moment, collecting his thoughts like a general rallying his surviving troops after a massacre.
K.J. Parker
#32. When she started crying, all he wanted to do was hit her.
K.J. Parker
#33. A city with no way of telling the time can by no stretch of the imagination be called civilised. It's just a mob with walls.
K.J. Parker
#34. Ah well. He'd beaten her twice sind then: once on their honeymoon, though he still suspected her of throwing the game, and once on the day she lost the baby. And two out of eight hundred and six wasn't too bad, against such an opponent.
K.J. Parker
#35. Faith comes in different tempers: there's the hard, brittle faith that shatters when it meets an obstacle it can't cut through, and the tough, springy faith that bounces off unchipped.
K.J. Parker
#36. It's remarkable the truly stupid things people can do because it's expected of them, or they think it's expected of them.
K.J. Parker
#37. The exceptionally profound is always, by definition, basic and mundane.
K.J. Parker
#38. One of these days I'd really like to win a battle, rather than just stand quiet while they lose it at me. You know, just to be able say I'd done it. But I'm not complaining. I mean, it works.
K.J. Parker
#39. Death is to be feared because of the pain and loss it inflicts through love, and for no other reason.
K.J. Parker
#40. The public," he said, "bless them. It's the same in tailoring: they always think they know more about your job than you do, and then you get the blame when it ends up looking a mess." He
K.J. Parker
#41. A wise man once said that any human being is capable of infinite achievement, so long as it's not the work they're supposed to be doing.
K.J. Parker
#42. After all, what is truth but the consensus of memories of reliable witnesses?
K.J. Parker
#43. In politics, it's what isn't said that matters.
K.J. Parker
#45. That was the truly horrifying thing about it: the sense of time as an enemy, to be fought tooth and nail
but there was so much of it; you killed an hour, but what good did that do when there were thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions more hours just waiting to take its place?
K.J. Parker
#46. Ah well." Gignomai turned slowly round. "It's not often commented on, but when you stop and think, mercy is the biggest injustice of them all.
K.J. Parker
#47. Always tell as much truth as you can when you're lying," he said. "Nothing deceives like the truth." The
K.J. Parker
#48. In an ideal world, you'd be able to pick beef puddings from a beef pudding tree.
K.J. Parker
#49. The world is full of annoyances, none more infuriating than a fool with a valid point.
K.J. Parker
#50. For what it was worth, she got the impression that Niessa liked her, or at least approved of her, in the same way a chess-player approves of one of his pieces when it stays where it's been put and doesn't go wandering off all over the board.
K.J. Parker
#51. It never ceases to amaze me how adaptable social geometry can be. Within a couple of days I went from being the centre of the circle to an indefinite point outside its circumference.
K.J. Parker
#52. The easiest way to do anything is properly.
K.J. Parker
#53. The quickest way to a man's heart,' said the instructor, 'is proverbially through his stomach. But if you want to get into his brain, I recommend the eye-socket.
K.J. Parker
#54. Age is irrelevant where two people have deep, sincere feelings for each other.
K.J. Parker
#55. He took a couple of steps. "I clink," he said. "It's undignified."
"Everybody clinks. It's what soldiers do.
K.J. Parker
#56. It doesn't matter if your ignorant so long as you can find people to know stuff for you.
K.J. Parker
#57. Basic fact of life: no matter how far you run, you always take yourself with you.
K.J. Parker
#58. His mother collected medicines, rather in the way a boy collects coins or seals or arrowheads; one or two genuine pieces, along with a whole load of junk.
K.J. Parker
#59. Most wars start because someone makes a mistake, and most battles are lost by the losing side rather than won by the victors. I'm not sure if that makes things better or worse. I suppose it depends on which you disapprove of more, malice or stupidity.
K.J. Parker
#60. When you get to my age, you'll find it's fatally easy to forget to hate all your enemies all the time; and once you've slipped up and not hated one of them, it makes it almost impossibly hard to hate the rest of them.
K.J. Parker
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