19 quotes
Mocking the wisdom that comes with age is a fit sport only for those who expect never to attain much of it themselves.
Inversions (1998)
“One does not spy on one’s own people,” ZeSpiole informed him. “One has, rather, conduits of communication which lead to the common man.”
Inversions (1998)
You can draw the blinds in a brothel, but people still know what you’re doing.
Inversions (1998)
People often behave badly when they are trying to prove a point.
Inversions (1998)
“Some of us prefer history to legends, lady,” DeWar said heavily, “and sometimes everybody can be wrong.”
Inversions (1998)
I am told he is something of a scholar, which is no bad thing in a king, providing it is not taken to excess.
Inversions (1998)
We only become beasts—we become worse than beasts—when we torment others.
Inversions (1998)
“I had formed the impression the Protector valued your counsel.”
“It is most valued when it most closely accords with his own view.”
Inversions (1998)
No! Get away from me, you wittering purple rogues! Away and become bankers the lot of you—admit what you really love!
Inversions (1998)
What I know was passed to me by others, and so must surrender the toll which information tends to pay when it passes through the minds and memories of others.
Inversions (1998)
Perhaps my certainty is misplaced.
Inversions (1998)
Of course, she does seem to be a rather good doctor. At the very least she has done the King no obvious harm, and that in my experience is far more than one might reasonably expect from a court physician.
Inversions (1998)
Pain, or even just discomfort, is like the warning sent by a frontier guard, sir. You are free to choose to ignore it, but you should not be unduly surprised if you are subsequently over-run by invaders.
Inversions (1998)
The only sin is selfishness.
Inversions (1998)
“See if you can hold off this pack of blood-sucking scavengers. Here’s my duelling sword.” The King handed me his own sword! “You have full permission to use it on anyone who looks remotely like a physician.”
Inversions (1998)
Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place—and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all—so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.
Inversions (1998)
Did the Doctor really imagine that everbody went around believing different things? One believed what one was told to believe, what it made sense to believe. Unless one was a foreigner, of course, or a philosopher.
Inversions (1998)
“Quettil, it doesn’t matter,” the King said airily, waving one hand. “I prefer accuracy to flattery.”
Inversions (1998)
That was another thing she taught me. That you are what you do. To Providence—or Progress or the Future or before any other sort of judgment apart from our own conscience—what we have done, not what we have thought, is the result we are judged by.
Inversions (1998)