Scott Lynch

“If reassurances could dull pain, nobody would ever go to the trouble of pressing grapes.”

“Maybe the one real advantage to getting older is that you have the time to pull your head a little bit farther out of your ass.”

“Familiarity has a way of filing the sharp edges off our feelings for other people. You'll see.”

“I sometimes think that 'friend' is just a word I use for all the people I haven't murdered yet.”

“I assure you that in all matters of discretion not involving food, we make etiquette tutors look like slobbering barbarians.”

“Gods, I love this place," Locke said, drumming his fingers against his thighs. "Sometimes I think this whole city was put here simply because the gods must adore crime. Pickpockets rob the common folk, merchants rob anyone they can dupe, Capa Barsavi robs the robbers and the common folk, the lesser nobles rob nearly everyone, and Duke Nicovante occasionally runs off with his army and robs the shit out of Tal Verarr or Jerem, not to mention what he does to his own nobles and his common folk.”

“You want a lesson, boy? If you find yourself being born, climb back in as quick as you can, because life's a bottomless feast of shit.”

“My name's Jean Tannen, and I'm the ambush.”

“Crooked Warden, I will fear no darkness for the night is yours. Your night is my cloak, my shield, my escape from those who hunt to feed the noose. I will fear no evil, for you have made the night my friend.”

“Advice," Doña Vorchenza chuckled. "Advice. The years play a sort of alchemical trick, transmuting one's mutterings to a state of respectability. Give advice at forty and you're a nag. Give it at seventy and you're a sage.”

“If you want to write a negative review, don't tickle me gently with your aesthetic displeasure about my work. Unleash the goddamn Kr”

“What do you do,' said Jean, 'with, ah, "ungifted" children when you have them?''Cherish them and raise them, you imbecile. Most of them end up working for us, in Karthain and elsewhere. What did you think we'd do, burn them on a pyre?''Forget I asked”