Dan Abnett > Quotes

“But my patience isn't limitless... unlike my authority.”
― Dan Abnett, Xenos

“I was there, the day that Horus killed the Emperor”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“If he speaks again without me knowing who he is, I will throw him out of the window. And I won't open it first.”
― Dan Abnett, Xenos

“I know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude - we've proven that time and time again. People are more ready to fight and die for a word than for anything else. Words shape thought, stir feeling, and force action. They kill and revive, corrupt and cure.”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“Have you noticed we can breathe in here too?
Gosh, I wouldn't have picked up on that.”
― Dan Abnett, Hereticus

“We pick up the pieces, Donna. Some of them are broken.”
― Dan Abnett, Doctor Who: The Forever Trap

“All the way to hell. In a fancy paper hat.”
― Dan Abnett, Titanicus

“In my experience, the heavy-handed, terror-inspiring approach closes as many doors as it smashes open.”
― Dan Abnett, Xenos

“I am an Imperial commissar. I will enflame the weak, support the wavering, guide the lost. I will be all things to all men who need me. But I will also punish without hesitation the incompetent, the cowardly, and the treasonous. --Ibram Gaunt”
― Dan Abnett, Necropolis

“Rebuild your world, rebuild your race, rebuild your empire. Rebuild it all. But make sure you rebuild your ideals too. Rebuild the principles that made you a great and honorable galactic power in the first place. Don't prey on the weak. Don't steal from the helpless. Don't murder the innocent. Be a force for good, not a force for yourself.”
― Dan Abnett, Doctor Who: The Silent Stars Go By

“You are walking along the shores of a lake,’ Sindermann said. ‘A boy is drowning. Do you let him drown because he was foolish enough to fall into the water before he had learned to swim? Or do you fish him out, and teach him how to swim?’
Loken shrugged. ‘The latter.’
‘What if he fights you off as you attempt to save him, because he is afraid of you? Because he doesn’t want to learn how to swim?’
‘I save him anyway.”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“Chaos claims the unwary or the incomplete. A true man may flinch away its embrace, if he is stalwart, and he girds his soul with the armour of contempt.”
― Dan Abnett, Ravenor

“Even a life of pain is not worth wasting.”
― Dan Abnett, Gilead's Blood

“Gamora: History repeating itself?

Warlock: History doesn't repeat itself, Gamora, but sometimes it rhymes.”
― Dan Abnett, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1: Legacy

“The difference between gods and daemons largely depends upon where one is standing at the time.”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“The Emperor, you see, protects... He protects mankind, through the Legions, through the Martial corps, through the war machines of the Mechanicum. He understands the dangers. The inconsistencies. He uses you, and all the instruments like you, to protect us from harm. To protect our physical bodies from murder and damage, to protect our minds from madness, to protect our souls... There are insane dangers in the cosmos, dangers that mankind is fundamentally unable to comprehend, let alone survive. So he protects us. There are truths out there that would drive us mad by one fleeting glimpse of them. So he chooses not to share them with us. That's why he made you... Remember, Garviel. The Emperor is our truth and out light. If we trust in him, he will protect.”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“That's all you get," said Alpharius, and split him in half.
Alpharius sheathed his gladius, and dragged the sabre out of his torso. He tossed it away, and walked through the liter of bodies to where Namatjira was kneeling on the deck.
"Please! My lord primarch! Please, I beg you!" Namtjira pleaded, his hands making a desperate namaste.
Alpharius drew his boltgun.
"Why?" shrieked Namatjira. "Why are you doing this?
"For the Emperor," said Alpharius, and pulled the trigger.”
― Dan Abnett, Legion

“All my life, I have had a reputation for being cold, unfeeling. Some have called me heartless, ruthless, even cruel. I am not. I am not beyond emotional response or compassion. But I possess - and my masters count this as perhaps my paramount virtue - a singular force of will. Throughout my career it has served me well to draw on this facility and steel myself, unflinching, at all that this wretched galaxy can throw at me. To feel pain or fear or grief is to allow myself a luxury I cannot afford.”
― Dan Abnett, Xenos

“Great actions have shaped our society.’ Sindermann said. The greatest of these, physically, has been the Emperor's formal and complete unification of Terra, the outward sequel to which, this Great Crusade, we are now engaged upon. But the greatest, intellectually, has been our casting off of that heavy mantle called religion. Religion damned our species for thousands of years, from the lowest superstition to the highest conclaves of spiritual faith. It drove us to madness, to war,
to murder, it hung upon us like a disease, like a shackle ball. I'll tell you what religion was... No, you tell me. You, there?'
'Ignorance, sir.’
Thank you, Khanna. Ignorance. Since the earliest times, our species has striven to understand the workings of the cosmos, and where that understanding has failed, or fallen short, we have filled in the gaps, plastered over the discrepancies, with blind faith. Why does the sun go round the sky? I don't know, so I will attribute it to the efforts of a sun god with a golden chariot. Why do people die? I can't say, but I will choose to believe it is the murky business of a reaper who carries souls to some afterworld.”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“Loken took a step forward. ‘Commander,’ he said, ‘I will own up to ignorance and embrace illumination, but I will not be laughed at.”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“Regard the books,' Sinderman said,
'Are there some I should read? Will you prepare a list for me?' (asked Loken)
'Read them all. Read them again. Swallow the learning and ideas of our predecessors whole, for it can only improve you as a man...”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“Maybe belief is the biggest lie. In ages past, the earliest philosophers tried to explain the stars in the sky and the world around them. One of them conceived of the notion that the universe was mounted on giant crystal spheres controlled by a giant machine, which explained the movements of the heavens. He was laughed at and told that such a machine would be so huge and noisy that everyone would hear it. He simply replied that we are born with that noise all around us, and that we are so used to hearing it that we cannot hear it at all.”
― Dan Abnett

“oh come on'P.O.E.T.S.'? 'piss.off.early.tomorrows.saterday.' the weekend approches people!”
― Dan Abnett

“Perhaps we are cursed," Karkasy told the empty fane, "to crave something which does not exist. There are no gods, no spirits, no daemons. So we make them up, to comfort ourselves.”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“Caches of data are being recovered all the time. Why, just the other day, I heard that we now had complete texts for all three of Shakespire's plays!”
― Dan Abnett, Prospero Burns

“Sometimes, there just isn't the opportunity or willingness to make things better. Sometime you can't simply have another go. You make a choice, and its a bad one, and you're left with it. No amount of trying again will fix it. Don't expect anyone to feel sorry for you, to cut you slack; you made a mistake and you'll have to live with it.”
― Dan Abnett, Sabbat Worlds

“That’s what I love about people. They have dreams and grand ambitions, and they start building towards them, even though they know they won’t live to see them finished. That’s how the pyramids were built.”
― Dan Abnett, Doctor Who: The Silent Stars Go By

“Do I look evil? I can't do evil. I can barely pull off dangerous.”
― Dan Abnett, Doctor Who: The Silent Stars Go By

“For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium, for whom a thousand souls die every day, for whom blood is drunk and flesh eaten. Human blood and human flesh – the stuff of which the Imperium is made. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. This is the tale of those times.

Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods.”
― Dan Abnett

“Reverse your thinking. Positivity is psychologically rewarding.”
― Dan Abnett, Guardians 3000: Time After Time