Eric's Reviews > Chronicles of the Black Company

“There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies. We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Maybe. We're all equals at the dark gate, no? The sands run for us all. Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Yes. He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That what we are determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which there is no escape simply by being ourselves and interacting with other selves.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Limper flopped violently. The gag flew out of his mouth. His ankle bonds parted. He gained his feet, tried to run, tried to mouth some spell that would protect him. He had gone thirty feet when a thousand fiery snakes streaked out of the night and swarmed him. They covered his body. They slithered into his mouth and nose, into his eyes and ears. They went in the easy way and came gnawing out through his back and chest and belly. And he screamed. And screamed. And screamed.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of The Black Company

“No one will sing songs in our memory. We are the last of the Free Companies of Khatovar. Our traditions and memories live only in these Annals. We are our own mourners”
― Glen Cook The Black Company, Chronicles of the Black Company

“No one will sing songs in our memory. We are the last of the Free Companies of Khatovar. Our traditions and memories live only in these Annals. We are our only mourners. It is the Company against the world. Thus it has been and ever will be.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Let’s say the madonnas of the night in Elm were severely disappointed in the Black Company.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“This is a favorite game, matching wits with a Raker. He is blind to the dead, to the burning villages, to the starving children. As is the Rebel. Two blind armies, able to see nothing but one another.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Religion is something that gets hammered in early, and never really goes away. And has powers to move which go beyond anything rational.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“One’s own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid. Death is the only exorcism.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“I am a haunted man. I am haunted by the Limper’s screams. I am haunted by the Lady’s laughter. I am haunted by my suspicion that we are furthering the cause of something that deserves to be scrubbed from the face of the earth. I am haunted by the conviction that those bent upon the Lady’s eradication are little better than she. I am haunted by the clear knowledge that, in the end, evil always triumphs.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Lately I’ve felt the burden of time more and more, all too often dwelling on everything I’ve missed. I can laugh at peasants and townies chained all their lives to a tiny corner of the earth while I roam its face and see its wonders, but when I go down, there will be no child to carry my name, no family to mourn me save my comrades, no one to remember, no one to raise a marker over my cold bit of ground. Though I have seen great events, I will leave no enduring accomplishment save these Annals. Such conceit. Writing my own epitaph disguised as Company history.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Little people have to hate, have to blame someone for their own inadequacies.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“I believe in our side and theirs, with the good and evil decided after the fact, by those who survive.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Oh, ’twould be marvelous if the world and its moral questions were like some game board, with plain black players and white, and fixed rules, and nary a shade of grey.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Cruel it may be, but most of us enjoy what we do—and the Captain more than anyone. This is a favorite game, matching wits with a Raker. He is blind to the dead, to the burning villages, to the starving children. As is the Rebel. Two blind armies, able to see nothing but one another.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“When I reflect on my companions’ inner natures I usually wish I controlled one small talent. I wish I could look inside them and unmask the darks and brights that move them. Then I take a quick look into the jungle of my own soul and thank heaven that I cannot. Any man who barely sustains an armistice with himself has no business poking around in an alien soul.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Seems to know you,” the Captain observed. “He thought I was dead.” Jalena rejoined his party. He gabbled and pointed. Pale-faced men looked our way. They argued briefly, then the whole lot fled the garden. Raven did not explain. Instead, he said, “Shall we get to business?” “Care to illuminate what just happened?” The Captain’s voice had a dangerous softness. “No.” “Better reconsider. Your presence could endanger the whole Company.” “It won’t. It’s a personal matter. I won’t bring it with me.” The Captain thought about it. He is not one to intrude on a man’s past. Not without cause. He decided he had cause. “How can you avoid bringing it? Obviously, you mean something to Lord Jalena.” “Not to Jalena. To friends of his. It’s old history. I’ll settle it before I join you. Five people have to die to close the book.” This sounded interesting. Ah, the smell of mystery and dark doings, of skulduggery and revenge. The meat of a good tale.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“We all have our pasts. I suspect we keep them nebulous not because we are hiding from our yesterdays but because we think we will cut more romantic figures if we roll our eyes and dispense delicate hints about beautiful women forever beyond our reaches. Those men whose stories I have uprooted are running from the law, not a tragic love affair.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“I snuck a glance at her. She wore a teasing little smile. I shifted my attention to the fighting. What she did to me, just sitting there, amidst the fury of the end of the world, was more frightening than the prospect of a death in battle. I am too old to boil like a horny fifteen-year-old.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Over coming days, when I sneaked down to the Buskin, he revealed everything recorded where he appears as the focal character. I do not think I have met many men who disgusted me more. Nastier”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“That is something I like to look at with any villain. What twists and knots went into the thread tying the creature at Charm to the little girl who was? 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? I walk through our barracks and wonder how a giggling, inquisitive toddler could have become a Three Fingers, a Jolly, or a Silent. 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, Chronicles of the Black Company

“We gathered our things and began taking leave of camp followers who had trickled out from the city. Our animals and equipment would be their reward for faith and friendship. I spent a sad, gentle hour with a woman to whom I meant more than I suspected. We shed no tears and told one another no lies. I left her with memories and most of my pathetic fortune. She left me with a lump in my throat and a sense of loss not wholly fathomable.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“The Lady made a few gestures around Bomanz—who looked pretty moth-eaten—and said a few words in a language I did not understand. Why do sorcerers always use languages nobody understands? Even Goblin and One-Eye do it. Each has confided that he cannot follow the tongue the other uses. Maybe they make it up?”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“My arguments were beginning to sound a little strained to me, too. I was in the position of a priest trying to sell religion.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Madle named names. Some were on my list and some were not. Those that were not I assumed to be spear carriers. Tally had been well and reliably scouted. The last corpse went out. I gave Madle a small gold piece. He goggled. His customers regarded him with unfriendly eyes. I grinned. “For services rendered.” Madle blanched, stared at the coin. It was a kiss of death. His patrons would think he had helped set the ambush. “Gotcha,” I whispered. “Want to get out of this alive?” He looked at me in fear and hatred. “Who the hell are you guys?” he demanded in a harsh whisper. “The Black Company, Madle. The Black Company.” I don’t know how he managed, but he went even whiter.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“Raven is an asset in any game including One-Eye. One-Eye cheats. But never when Raven is playing.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“An army without faith in itself is beaten more surely than an army defeated in battle.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company

“It was a night for screamers. A broiling, sticky night of the sort that abrades that last thin barrier between the civilized man and the monster crouched in his soul.”
― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company