112 Quotes by R. Scott Bakker

One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten.

Love is like sleep. One can never seize, never force love.

I tell you, guilt dwells nowhere but in the eyes of the accuser. This men know even as they deny it, which is why they so often make murder their absolution. The truth of crime lies not with the victim but with the witness.

It seemed poison had been poured into wonder’s own decanter.

It is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing. Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything.

The darkness was crisp, as though scraped of sight and smell by winter’s razor.

The bondage we are born into is the bondage we cannot see. Verily, freedom is little more than the ignorance of tyranny. Live long enough, and you will see: Men resent not the whip so much as the hand that wields it.

He no longer heard Kellhus speak so much as observed him cut and carve, whittle and hew, as though the man had somehow shattered the glass of language and fashioned knives from the pieces.

Beliefs are the foundation of actions. Those who believed without doubting, he would say, acted without thinking. And those who acted without thinking were enslaved.