The Black Company Quotes

“Evil is relative…You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“If one chooses sides on emotion then the rebel is the guy to go with. He is fighting for everything men claim to honour, freedom, independance, truth, the right.......all the subjective illusions. All the eternal trigger words. We are minions of the villan of the piece. We confess the illusion and deny the substance.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Any man who barely sustains an armistice with himself has no business poking around in an alien soul.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Consider little children. There are not many of them not cute and lovable and precious, sweet as whipped honey and butter. So where do all the wicked people come from?”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“I was my usual charming morning self, threatening blood feud with anyone fool enough to disturb my dreams.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“You who come after me, scribbling these Annals, by now realize that I shy off portraying the whole truth about our band of blackguards. You know they are vicious, violent, and ignorant. They are complete barbarians, living out their cruelest fantasies, their behavior tempered only by the presence of a few decent men. I do not often show that side because these men are my brethren, my family, and I was taught young not to speak ill of kin. The old lessons die hardest.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Only a conquerer bothers to honor a fallen foe.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Ah, the smell of mystery and dark doings, of skulduggery and revenge. The meat of a good tale.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Still, the best augurs are those who divine from the portents of the past. They compile phenomenal records.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Part of winning is a downdeep certainty that, no matter how bad things look, a road to victory will open.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“One endured with humble dignity the consequences of youthful folly.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“I damned myself for my earlier romanticism. That Croaker who had come north, so thoroughly bemused by the mysterious Lady, was another man. A stripling, filled with the foolish ignorances of youth. Yeah. Sometimes you lie to yourself just to keep going.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Back to the company. Back to business. Back to the parade of years. Back to the annals. Back to fear.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“One-Eye’s handicap in no way impairs his marvelous hindsight. Lightning”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Evil is relative, Annalist. You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“A herd of minuscule lightning bugs poured out of One-Eye's nostrils. Good soldiers all, they fell into formation, spelling out the words Goblin is a Poof.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“The price of order,” I muttered. I tried to run the dog off. It wouldn’t budge.
“The cost of chaos,” Tom-Tom countered. Thump on his drum. “Not quite the same thing, Croaker.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“The lower ranks have the privilege of questioning the sanity and competence of their commanders. It’s the mortar holding an army together.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Nevertheless, four hours after dawn they began dying for their cause.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Okay, Croaker. What the hell happened?”
“I don't know. The falling sickness?”
“Give him some of his own soup,” somebody suggested. “Serve him right.” A tin cup appeared. We forced its contents down his throat.
His eye clicked open. “What are you trying to do? Poison me? Feh! What was that? Boiled sewage?”
“Your soup,” I told him.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“He surveyed his audience with that look of sublime solemnity only a drunk can muster.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“I am not religious. I cannot conceive of gods who would give a damn about humanity’s frothy carryings-on. I mean, logically, beings of that order just wouldn’t.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Closer at hand, the wheeling gulls were as surly and lackadaisical as the day promised to make most men.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Singed,” he said, assuming that air of phony dignity cats adopt after some particularly inept performance. Something like, “That’s what I meant to do all along.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“But maybe there is a force for greater good, created by our unconscious minds conjoined, that becomes an independent power greater than the sum of its parts.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Little girls are twice as precious and innocent as little boys. I do not know a culture that does not make them that way.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Essentially, the mercenary sets morality aside, or at best reorders the customary structures to fit the needs of his way of life. The great issues become how well he does his job, how faithfully he carries out his commission, how well he adheres to a standard demanding unswerving loyalties to his comrades. He dehumanizes the world outside the bounds of his outfit. Then anything he does, or witnesses, becomes of minor significance as long as its brunt is borne outside the Company.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“The Hanged Man stopped gesturing and struck a pose: man listening.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“I did not believe in evil as an active force, only as a matter of viewpoint, yet I had seen enough to make me question my philosophy.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company