There are men who bloom in chaos. You call them heroes or villains, depending on which side wins the war, but until the battle call they are but normal men who long for action, who lust for the opportunity to throw off the routine of their normal lives like a cocoon and come into their own. They sense a destiny larger than themselves, but only when structures collapse around them do these men become warriors.

Power revealed is power sacrificed.... The truly powerful exert their influence in ways unseen, unfelt. Some would say that a thing visible is a thing vulnerable.

One must always name a weapon. You cannot trust that which you cannot call by name.

I have gone as far as one can go in this life, man or beast. I hunger for nothing any longer. Repetition only extinguishes pleasure.

Survival often feels like an indignity.

One carries the sins of his forebears as one carries their features in his face. One bears their blood, and their honor or their blight.

Even if one understands that what one is doing is mad, it is indeed still madness.