Scott Lynch Quotes

#1. Like celestial bodies, transiting in their orbits, exerting their influences.

Scott Lynch

#2. Until you finally lose the strength for sarcasm, Locke, I wouldn't hire any mourners.

Scott Lynch

#3. The best disguises were those that were poured out of the heart rather than painted on the face.

Scott Lynch

#4. Let us speak behind our hands, lest our lips be read as the book of our designs, and let us find some place where only gods and rats may hear our words aloud.

Scott Lynch

#5. If you're going to live here, staying civil is as much a duty as sitting the steps or washing dishes. Now, while I bask in the glow of another moral sermon delivered with the precision of a master fencer, hold your applause and let's get back to last night.

Scott Lynch

#6. Just as you and I speak by forming words, the natural, private discourse of the Sanza twins appears to consist entirely of farts and savage beatings. What

Scott Lynch

#7. If he had a bloody gash across his throat and a physiker was trying to sew it up, Lamora would steal the needle and thread and die laughing.

Scott Lynch

#8. You're the complication I want more than anything else. You're my favorite complication. No

Scott Lynch

#9. Time's a river, Locke, and we've always drifted farther down it than we think.

Scott Lynch

#10. Any man can fart in a closed room and say that he commands the wind

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#11. Worst of all, the inner vault is guarded by a live dragon, attended by fifty naked women armed with poisoned spears, each of them sworn to die in Requin's service. All redheads.
-You're just making that up, Jean.

Scott Lynch

#12. The sky was a fading red and nothing remained of the day save for a line of molten gold slowly lowering on the western horizon.

Scott Lynch

#13. You have to be a dead-eyed dirty-souled maniac to want to spend your extended life trading punches with other maniacs. Once you've seized that power, there's no getting off the merry-go-round. You fight like hell just to hold on or you get shoved off.

Scott Lynch

#14. The next person who tells me something like, "Squiggle-fuck the rightwise cock-swatter with a starboard jib," is going to get a knife to the throat.

Scott Lynch

#15. Are you smarter than a pig, Locke?"
"On occasion," said Locke. "There are contrary opinions.

Scott Lynch

#16. How would you be able to detect a fart over your natural odor, Sanza?" "For shame," said Galdo. "There's no Sanzas here, remember? I'm an Asino." "Oh yes," said Locke with a yawn. "Yes, you certainly are.

Scott Lynch

#17. Locke threw himself at Father Chains, and the man, without hesitation, scooped him up and held him, patting his back until his racking sobs quieted down.

Scott Lynch

#18. Locke moaned.
'Quit sobbing, you damn baby,' Jean hissed as he began to lope back along the dock. 'You must have at least a half beer glass of blood left somewhere in there.'
But Locke was now well and truly unconscious ...

Scott Lynch

#19. When the sky's falling, I take shelter under bullshit.

Scott Lynch

#20. Barsavi knew how to create expectations, Locke, and how to use those expectations to mislead those who would harm him.

Scott Lynch

#21. Damn it, when will you learn that refusing to admit you've lost isn't the same as winning?" "Sort of depends on how long one keeps refusing, doesn't it?

Scott Lynch

#22. Well, if only I wasn't too much the gentleman to flay your spirit with a witty and cutting retort, madam, you'd be ... thoroughly ... um, wittily retorted at this very instant. - Locke Lamora

Scott Lynch

#23. They kissed for the sort of endless moment that only exists between lovers whose lips are still new territory to one another.

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#24. My disinterest in your bullshit is so tangible you could make bricks out of it

Scott Lynch

#25. You've got that motherly concern in your eyes, Jean. I must look like I'm hammered as shit," said Locke.
"Actually you look like you were executed last week.

Scott Lynch

#26. He said that life boils down to standing in line to get shit dropped on your head. Everyone's got a place in the queue, you can't get out of it, and just when you start to congratulate yourself on surviving your dose of shit, you discover that the line is actually circular.

Scott Lynch

#27. I think it's fairly common for writers to be afflicted with two simultaneous yet contradictory delusions, the burning certainty that we're unique geniuses, and the constant fear that we're witless frauds who are speeding toward epic failure.

Scott Lynch

#28. In the glass burrow beneath their feet, the flames began to rise. First the flames, and then the screams

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#29. Go forth now and live, Locke Lamora. Live, uncertain.

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#30. He was bewildered at how quickly he had escaped his old life and fallen into this new one with strangely pleasant crazy people.

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#31. Know something? I'd lay even odds that between the people following us and the people hunting us, we've become this city's principle means of employment. Tal Verrar's entire economy is now based on fucking with us.

Scott Lynch

#32. [W]hen you find yourself face to face with one [Bondsmage], you bow and scrape and mind your 'sirs' and 'madams.'
...
'Nice bird, asshole,' said Locke.

Scott Lynch

#33. As for why we're going over the plan again, let me remind you that one good screwup will make the fate of those poor bastards look sunny in comparison to what we'll get.

Scott Lynch

#34. That's great, Jean. I'm not just exiled; I'm being plumped up for slaughter.

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#35. Our patron has always sort of danced upon the notion that austerity and piety go hand in hand; down here, we show our appreciation for things by appreciating, if you get me.

Scott Lynch

#36. I didn't promise you shit. My dead friends, on the other hand
I made them certain promises I intend to keep.

Scott Lynch

#37. How very comforting. If reassurances could dull pain, nobody would ever go to the trouble of pressing

Scott Lynch

#38. A boy may be as disagreeable as he pleases, but when a girl refuses to crap sunshine on command, the world mutters darkly about her moods.

Scott Lynch

#39. Hard lessons were handed out. As many men learned to their sorrow, it's impossible to be intimidating when one angry woman has your cock between her teeth and another is holding a stiletto to your kidneys.

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#40. Not everything that's inevitable is regrettable.

Scott Lynch

#41. A voice called out, cold as chloroform and old shame.

Scott Lynch

#42. I shall give you a little prophecy, Locke Lamora, as best as I have seen it.
'Three things you must take up and three things you must lose before you die: a key, a crown, a child.' Patience pushed her hood up over her head. 'You will die when a silver rain falls.

Scott Lynch

#43. It was easy to laugh at such conceits in full daylight. But night had a way of lending weight to phantasms.

Scott Lynch

#44. May they all be stricken with the screaming fire-shits. He sipped his

Scott Lynch

#45. Got a ship with women and cats aboard, you'll have the finest luck you can hope

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#46. Interesting," said Sabetha, "that I mention my own feelings, and you seem to think that what I'm after is reassurance concerning your perceptions.

Scott Lynch

#47. In a fair fight, the don's man would almost certainly paint the walls with Locke and Calo's blood, so it stood to reason that this fight would have to be as unfair as possible.

Scott Lynch

#48. The functionaries in the courtyard of the Palace threw open their wooden shutters and settled in for a long day of saying "fuck off in the name of the duke" to all comers.

Scott Lynch

#49. Locke sighed.
'So this is winning,' he said.
'It is,' replied Jean.
'It can go fuck itself,' said Locke.

Scott Lynch

#50. What a mouse he is made by conversation,' " Ezri recited. " 'Scorns gods, dares battle, and flinches from a maid's rebuke! Merest laugh from merest girl is like a dagger felt, and like a dagger, makes a lodging of his breast. Turns blood to milkwater and courage to faint memory.'

Scott Lynch

#51. Begging everyone's pardon," said Big Konar, "but it ain't polite to have an argument if nobody else knows what the fuck you're arguing about.

Scott Lynch

#52. It smelled something like a keg of bad beer overturned in a mortician's storage room on a hot summer's day.

Scott Lynch

#53. But this is silly - we could sit here all night contrasting cock-lengths. I say mine is five feet long, you say yours is six, and shoots fire upon command.

Scott Lynch

#54. Actually not bad at all. Tastes minty, very refreshing."
"A worthy epitaph," said Jean

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#55. Sorcery's impressive enough, but it's their fucking attitude that makes them such a pain.

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#56. If your father says 'Bark like a dog,' I say 'What breed, Your Honor?

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#57. You needed a bath," Jean interrupted. "You were covered in self-pity.

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#58. This brew could make a dead eunuch piss lightning,

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#59. Well then," said Locke. "Now that we've all realized precisely how tough we'll never be, let's stand on what we have.

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#60. You're my favorite complication.

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#61. To us - richer and cleverer than everyone else!

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#62. If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time. Chinese Proverb

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#63. What is government but theft by consent?

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#64. It must be nice to be righteous; from where I stand it looks like fucking lunacy.

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#65. So that makes us robbers of robbers," said Bug, "who pretend to be robbers working for a robber of other robbers.

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#66. Good. Well. Shit." Locke rubbed his gloved hands together. "I guess that's that. I'm all out of rhetorical flourishes.

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#67. Only prisoners were ever granted easy passage into a prison.

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#68. I desire you as deeply as I ever have, but I understand that the fervor of a desire is irrelevant to its justice.

Scott Lynch

#69. You know who else thought lightly of them, once? The Falconer.

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#70. His view of the sky spun first left then right, as though the world were trying on strange new angles for his approval.

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#71. We don't see the life after life as it truly is, because in our eyes it conforms to our mechanics of nature.

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#72. I think piracy is a bit like drinking. You want to stay out all night doing it, you pay the price the next day.

Scott Lynch

#73. I'm ever so sorry,' said Sabetha. If the words THAT WAS A LIE had suddenly sprung up behind her in letters of fire ten feet high, the effect could scarcely have added to her tone of voice.

Scott Lynch

#74. Why do you assume it's something you've done, and something you can undo at will? I'm not some arithmetic problem just waiting for you to show your work properly, Locke. Did

Scott Lynch

#75. Hey," said Locke, scratching his stubble absently with his quill. "That sounds suspiciously like wisdom, damn your eyes. Why must you always flounce about being wiser than me?" "Doesn't require much conscious effort.

Scott Lynch

#76. If I could just somehow let you see yourself through my eyes. I guarantee your feet would never touch the ground again.

Scott Lynch

#77. The sunrise sky was creeping over the edge of the city in orange-and-scarlet striations, and the clocks were or were not chiming seven.

Scott Lynch

#78. Barsavi realized something that too many men in the city were slow to grasp; an idea that he reinforced years later when he took the Berangias sisters to be his primary enforcers. He was wise enough to understand that the women of Camorr could be underestimated only at great peril to one's health.

Scott Lynch

#79. That's how luck works, lad.
You can bitch all you like about how things could have been more favorable for you, but rest assured things can always be worse.
Always.

Scott Lynch

#80. You simply collapsed, sir. In layman's terms, your body revoked its permission for you to continue heaping abuse upon it.

Scott Lynch

#81. I want to hug you. And I want to tear your gods-damned head off. Both at once."
"Ah," said Locke. "Near as I can tell, that's the definition of 'family' right there.

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#82. I'm just... enjoying the floor. It was kind enough to catch me when I fell.

Scott Lynch

#83. Can you imagine those poor bastards grappling their prey, leaping over the rails, swords in hand, screaming 'Your cats! Give us all your god-damned cats!

Scott Lynch

#84. She ran, as best she could run; as she made her way toward the rail it became a jog, and then a desperate hop. She was on fire all the way, screaming all the way, unstoppable all the way.

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#85. It had the expression common to all kittens, that of a tyrant in the becoming. I was comfortable, and you dared to move, those jade eyes said. For that you must die.

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#86. Jerome. May I see you in my cabin? Just for a few minutes?"
"A few minutes?" Jerome grinned. "Tsk, Ezri, when did you become such a pessimist?"
"Now," she said, wiping the smile from his face. Chagrined, he helped her to her feet.

Scott Lynch

#87. Sweat, scalded meat, puke, blood, smoke and a dozen kinds of bad ale and wine: the bouquet of civilized nightlife

Scott Lynch

#88. This is what a command is. Staring consequences in the eye and pretending not to flinch.

Scott Lynch

#89. I'm going to put that fucker in the dirt as deeply as any man who's ever been murdered, ever since the world began.

Scott Lynch

#90. And for all our sakes, tame that mess on top of your head. Use fire and a poleaxe if you have to.

Scott Lynch

#91. Well, cheer up. At least you've got more mobility than a fucking tadpole on dry land.

Scott Lynch

#92. Well, it certainly is nice to be free from the threat of that lamp, my boy." Chains drew a last breath of smoke, then rubbed his dwindling sheaf of tobacco out against the roof stones. "Was it informing for the duke? Plotting to murder us?

Scott Lynch

#93. Arms out, falling backward, staring up into the hot near-noon sky with the confident assurance of all twelve of his years that death and injury were things reserved solely for people that weren't Bug.

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#94. I want you to use your misplaced acorn for a brain before the squirrel comes looking for it again.

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#95. Butterflies instantly came to life in his stomach, and the little bastards were heavily armed.

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#96. You bite on reflex, and then your conscience bites you.

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#97. Come, then! Face Ravelle! The gods have sent your doom, motherfuckers!

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#98. I wouldn't call it looming, madam. Some of us simply aren't built for looming, said Locke.

Scott Lynch

#99. I'm very pleased. Very, very pleased. But I really must ask - why the hell have men and women been throwing money in my kettle for the past half hour, telling me they're sorry for what happened in the Videnza?" "It's because they're sorry for what happened in the Videnza," said Galdo.

Scott Lynch

#100. I don't have to fight or run," [Locke] cackled. "I changed the rules of the game. I just have to keep you here ... asshole.
Here ... until ... Jean gets back.

Scott Lynch