83 Quotes by K.J. Parker

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.

Common sense dictates that any voice you hear inside your head must be just you, thinking; so, if you know it’s just you and you know you’re basically an idiot, what possesses you to do what the stupid voice tells you?

Witnesses are, of course, ambivalent; some of them need record what would otherwise be lost and go to waste, while others need to hunted down and killed before they cant tell what they know; and the man who stands on the grave of the last witness own the truth and is responsible for it, a dangerous trustee.

To try and rationalise all this in terms of right, wrong, good, evil, is just naive; the very worst things we do, after all, we do for love, and the very worst pain we feel comes from love. She was right about that. In my opinion, love is the greatest and most enduring enemy, because love gives rise to the memories that kill us, slowly, every day. I think a man who never encounters love might quite possibly live forever. He’d have to, because if he died, who the hell would ever remember him?

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.

He looked at me the way the male spider gazes at his beloved. He knows he’s going to get eaten afterwards, but it’ll be worth it. “Deal,” he said.

I’m starting to get the enemy and the auditors muddled up in my mind. I’m terrified of both of them, but the auditors know where I live.

I don’t believe in gods, only in religion.

He never makes notes, he just remembers it all, like a barmaid.