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Sometimes our worst fears aren’t realized—though in my experience it’s only to make room for the fears our imagination was insufficient to house.

I knew that many men were scared of themselves, frightened that they would let themselves down, that they would run rather than fight, choose the dishonourable path, the easy path rather than the hard.

Bravery is just a different kind of broken. The quins are missing whatever it is a man needs in order to feel fear. Snorri’s scared of being a coward. There’s a wyrm like that in their heathen stories, Oroborus, eating its own tail. Scared of being a coward, is that what bravery is? Am I brave because I don’t fear being afraid? You’re of the light; the light reveals. Shine a bright enough light on any kind of bravery and isn’t it just a more complex form of cowardice?

Men who’ve made choices always feel they own their destiny. Few ever think to ask who shaped and offered up those choices. Who dangles the carrot they think they’ve chosen to follow.

Mountains are pretty at a distance, but my advice is to never let them get to be more than scenery. If you have to crane your neck to look at something, you’re too close.

Спасение! Есть что-то почти оргазмическое в том, чтобы вырваться из-под груды проблем на свободу и показать всем длинный нос. Может статься, завтра та же неприятность будет ждать за углом, но сегодня, прямо сейчас, она повержена, лежит в пыли.

“Is there anything good about the North? Anything at all? Any single thing that I can’t better find somewhere warm?” “Snow.” “Snow’s not good. It’s just cold water gone wrong.” “Mountains. The mountains are beautiful.” “Mountains are inconvenient lumps of rock that get in people’s way.”

“We should give them something to think about,” I said. <...> “Toss the corpses over?” Snorri asked. “It might make them think twice.” It would make me think just the once, and the thought would be I’ll come back later.

With Snorri troubles were always put front and centre and dealt with. My style was more to shove them under the rug until the floor got too uneven to navigate, and then to move house.

Never having been troubled by a conscience before, I was far from sure what to expect of one, and so when for a minute or two each day at dawn a voice began to whisper to me to be a better man, I decided the shock of recent events had finally woken mine. My conscience had a name—Baraqel. I didn’t like him much.