R.J. Barker > Quotes

“Can you add a quote from yourself? That would be pointless, what sort of fool would do that?”
― R.J. Barker

“Bad friends are worse than no friends,”
― R.J. Barker, Age of Assassins

“We are cursed to be the sum of our deeds, black as they may be. They are like an arrow: once the shot is made, there is no escaping the consequences.”
― R.J. Barker, Blood of Assassins

“I did not for one moment long to be alone; in fact, my loneliness was as much a prison as this brig is. I simply longed for someone who would let me be as I wished to be.”
― R.J. Barker, Call of the Bone Ships

“I’ll not deny the Hag my love, Let us fly to her in pride. I’ll not deny the Hag my love, For duty have I died.”
― R.J. Barker, The Bone Ships

“The greatest revenge is not taken with a blade, it is that done by taking your enemy’s taunts and throwing them back in their face.”
― R.J. Barker, The Bone Ships

“Sometimes it took the harshest of lights for someone to see clearly. That light had shone upon him. He had come through the darkness of the night and seen the truth of himself. He had run all his life from what he was, what he could be. And sometimes you must stop running. Realise it was not what you were, but who you could be.”
― R.J. Barker, Gods of the Wyrdwood

“My father made battles sound like glorious things.” “That is for stories,” she said quietly. “We fight in the hope that others will not have to, and we fight to keep those we have come to care about safe. We fight even for those who do not deserve it. There is no honour or greatness in what we do, except among fools. I fight, in the end, because I have no other choice” – she held his gaze with hers – “and neither do you. So remember this, if you hear tales of bravery and greatness, they are nearly always told by people who have only watched battle from afar. Those of us who have suffered through it know such stories as a skin over the horror of what is true. No sane woman or man wishes for war, and those that do never would if they thought it would leave paint on their doorsteps.”
― R.J. Barker, The Bone Ships

“So you will take me to die with you?” he said. He had seen little that made him believe they had any sort of friendship, but this seemed little thanks for it.”
― R.J. Barker, The Bone Ships

“Foulness farted out of the grating to join the oozing stream that ran down the motte and joined the river.”
― R.J. Barker, Age of Assassins

“This is a place where the sky meets the land. A rancid yellow line where one would be indistinguishable from the other if not for the languid movement of the yellow clouds crawling across the sky, desperate, but too sickly, to escape.”
― R.J. Barker, King of Assassins

“Close your eyes, take a breath. The forest came to life around him. Feeling each and every tendril of life: gasmaws floating in the canopy, the bladderweeds and floatvine plants climbing through the branches, histi and burrowers beneath the ground, the sheer and almost unbearable weight of the life around him. Behind that the massive, slow and heavy life force of the trees, and underpinning it the vast and delicate web of the fungal mats that touched upon everything on Crua. For a brief moment Cahan knew the terrifying, undeniable interconnectedness of it all. He saw it not as material, not as flesh or wood or anything solid. He saw it as light. Streamers of it, light of every colour, some light blinding some light dark, existing in ways he had no words for, and all of it a flow. He only needed to reach into this man to become a part of it.”
― R.J. Barker, Gods of the Wyrdwood

“that is all we are. A brief light in the darkness, destined to be swallowed up by the sea.”
― R.J. Barker, The Bone Ship's Wake

“heaving on the rope while the man inside screamed unintelligibly. Further down from us, Boros had not moved. He sat and stared intently at his brother”
― R.J. Barker, King of Assassins

“Patience is the assassin's greatest ally.”
― R.J. Barker, Age of Assassins

“It nodded at his words then stepped back. As he turned for the door it smoke again, softly.
"Are you sad, Joron Twiner?"
"Sad?"
"Smell lonely. Not a good smell."
"And you would know?"
"Yes," said the gullaime, and this was the cry of faraway skeers circling over their nests, the cry that every deckchild associated with lost ships, breakers smashingon to cruellytoothed rocks. It was the sound of loss. "Yes," it said again. "I know.”
― R.J. Barker, The Bone Ships

“No sane woman or man wishes for war, and those that do never would if they thought it would leave paint on their doorsteps.”
― R.J. Barker, The Bone Ships

“Indeed, Farys.” Joron stretched his shoulders, getting the ropes of the gullaime’s harness comfortable. “Who among you knows the land well?” None answered, and Joron almost kicked himself. He may as well have accused them of being stonebound – no deckchild would admit to that. “Are there those here who Meas trusts to hunt when her ship needs food?”
― R.J. Barker, The Bone Ships

“Gwyfher the bladesmistress”
― R.J. Barker, Age of Assassins

“He supposed now that if you stood in someone's shadow the world was always darker.”
― R.J. Barker, War Lords of Wyrdwood

“Few have the tits on them for that.”
― R.J. Barker, The Bone Ships

“Are there any other well-guarded places I should not be that you would like me to get into, Shipwife?” he asked.

“Not at the moment, Joron,” she smiled, “but when I think of them you will be first to know.”
― R.J. Barker, The Bone Ships

“How to explain the impossible?
The feeling of stepping through stone. One minute to be in fear of your life, surrounded by the shouting and screaming of war. The next to be in silence and quiet and between those states. A moment of eternity that lasted no time at all. As a child he had fallen in a pool, one of those rare, deep bodies of water seldom seen in Crua. Ont still remembered the feeling of falling but not falling, how he was completely enclosed by the water, at once aware this was an entirely alien element for him, but at the same time he was relaxed, he felt protected from the world and safe.”
― R.J. Barker, War Lords of Wyrdwood

“It is not quite as rewarding done while a castle’s toilets empty themselves over your body, but a happy life is one where you take your pleasures where you can.”
― R.J. Barker, Age of Assassins