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Quotes from The Dragonbone Chair — Tad Williams

born 1957 United States

← All quotes by Tad Williams

20 quotes

Ambitious men never believe others aren’t the same.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

A king’s son has nothing but inferiors, each one a potential assassin.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Nothing is without cost. There is a price to all power, and it is not always obvious.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

I shall endeavor to turn dross to purest Metal Absolute: in short, to teach you something.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

We trolls say: “Make Philosophy your evening guest, but do not let her stay the night.”

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

No charm is proof against a dagger in the back.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

“Is this being in love?” he suddenly wondered? It was nothing like the ballads he had heard sung—this was more irritating than uplifting.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Perhaps he was a bumpkin; at least he was an honest bumpkin.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Light, with its handmaiden color, was everywhere.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren’t many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity—a waste of precious time and effort.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

“This fellow,” he indicated the woodsman with a sweep of his stick, “will reliably not become more alive, but he may have friends or family who will be unsettled to find him so extremely dead.”

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Simon, there are more things you don’t know than there are things that I do know. I despair of the imbalance.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

If you have not noticed, we are preparing for war. I’m sorry if that inconveniences you.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Not being stupid is important.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

The wise man is not waiting for the realness of the world to prove itself to him. How can one be an authority before the experiencing of this realness? My master taught me—and to me it seems chash, meaning correct—that you must not defend against the entering of knowledge.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Damn everyone to Hell. And damn the bloody forest. And God, too, for that matter.
He looked up fearfully from his chill handful of water, but his silent blasphemy went unpunished.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

The fear was all he had left, but even that was something—he was afraid, so he must be alive! There was darkness, but there was Simon, too! There were not one and the same. Not yet. Not quite...

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

“I have not slept well since I first entered my brother’s dungeons. While my comfort has improved since then, worry has taken the place of hanging in chains as a denier of rest.”
“There are many kinds of imprisonment,” Jarnauga nodded.

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

“Sharp it away, lad, sharp it away,” the burly guardsman said, making the blade skitter across the whetstone, “lest otherways ye’ll be a girl afore ye’re a man.”

The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Tad Williams (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.