35 quotes
This is what happens when you get old. You start thinking. Worse, you start telling everybody what you think.
Soldiers Live (2000)
She had a full measure of youth’s indifference to the past.
Soldiers Live (2000)
Exact words were of no consequence. At heart the squabble was as old as humanity itself, fug-headed antiques locking horns with omniscient youth.
Soldiers Live (2000)
There was one temporal power greater than the greatest sorcery. Greed.
Soldiers Live (2000)
I did not expect them to try anything but I am alive at my age because I make a habit of being ready for trouble when it seems most unlikely.
Soldiers Live (2000)
She was not listening. If she listened she would have to hear uncomfortable truths.
Soldiers Live (2000)
I did not reflect on what my response, as Captain, would have been toward an underling with my present attitude. The Words Immortal are: That Was Different.
Soldiers Live (2000)
But, no. It was too late. Fortune’s die was cast. The cruel game had to be played to its end, no matter what anyone wanted.
Soldiers Live (2000)
Suvrin had a little too much of the politician in him. Too much of the kind of mind willing to let an individual go so the rest will not be inconvenienced.
Soldiers Live (2000)
He had leaped into the embrace of self-delusion.
There was a lot of that going around.
Soldiers Live (2000)
Life is never like a canal, flowing gently through a straightforward and predictable channel. It is more like a mountain brook, zigging and zagging, tearing things up, sometimes going almost dormant before taking an unexpected and turbulent turn.
Soldiers Live (2000)
Baladitya understands that in addition to being foreign territory the past is, as history, a hall of mirrors that reflect the needs of souls observing from the present. Absolute fact serves the hungers of only a few disconnected people. Symbol and faith serve the rest.
Soldiers Live (2000)
I reminded myself that Khang Phi is bereft of arms. That the monks abhor violence. That they always yield to strength, then seduce it with reason and wisdom.
Yes, sometimes it does take a while.
Soldiers Live (2000)
Seemed to have made peace with the bad times. Some manage that with comparative ease. Others remain crippled for life. Those are not the sort who remain soldiers. They become ex-soldiers and get intimate with wine or poppies.
Soldiers Live (2000)
There are several huge monasteries—of which Khang Phi is the greatest—dedicated to the preservation of knowledge. The monks do not sort it into good and evil knowledge, nor do they make moral judgments. They take the position that no knowledge is evil until someone chooses to do evil with it.
Soldiers Live (2000)