Top 400 Mark Lawrence Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “When you take a woman away from her man, what you get is a woman who can be taken away from her man.”

— Mark Lawrence

252. “Murder the wrong man and he’ll kill you.”

— Mark Lawrence

253. “I took the Nuban’s bow. I didn’t trust the midget to be able to run down any thieves, and besides, I might want to shoot a circus clown or two. Just for laughs.”

— Mark Lawrence

254. “Giljohn stood at the cart, held by bonds of the sort that no child can see, the kind made of debt and of a bitter understanding of the world’s truths, the kind that tear at a life as you struggle against them and leave wounds that won’t heal.”

— Mark Lawrence

255. “All men will dig their heels in if pushed enough. All men will reach the point that they say “no” for no reason other than opposition, for no reason other than the word fits their mouth, and tastes as good as it sounds.”

— Mark Lawrence

256. “Those novices are my friends and I would die for them. I would face a terror for them that I haven’t the courage to stand against on my own behalf.”

— Mark Lawrence

257. “Anger had its place, it was a weapon not to be neglected, but so did patience, and Nona decided that control lay in deciding which to use and when. She.”

— Mark Lawrence

258. “The greatest threat to any faith is not other faiths or beliefs but the corruption and division of its own message.”

— Mark Lawrence

259. “Nights spent on mountains are not to be recommended. Nights where the dark is full of the sounds of dead men trying to climb up to where you’re shivering under thin blankets, less so.”

— Mark Lawrence

260. “Superstition though does tend to have a sharp end, and I didn’t want to find myself impaled on it.”

— Mark Lawrence

261. “Angry at being angry – there’s a worm that will eat its tail and no mistake. I should have Oroborus on my family crest.”

— Mark Lawrence

262. “Snow makes a soft bed, but no man wakes from it. That was the wisdom of the North.”

— Mark Lawrence

263. “Oh come on, I just killed the fecking Pope. You are going to attack me, aren’t you?”

— Mark Lawrence

264. “I suspect most teenage boys could win the hundred metres in an attempt to outdistance parental embarrassment.”

— Mark Lawrence

265. “What made my loss, my pain, any more important than everyone else’s.”

— Mark Lawrence

266. “And they’re thieves to a man. If you shake a Rhonish hand, count your fingers afterward.”

— Mark Lawrence

267. “All leaves must fall in time, she had said. The lives we lived fall away from us, but something remains, something that is part of the tree.”

— Mark Lawrence

268. “I think you need to have lived more to truly know a man’s heart. You need to have made more transactions in life to know the worth of the coin you spend so freely.”

— Mark Lawrence

269. “She’ll never love you better than she loves her own children.”

— Mark Lawrence

270. “Yes, I should grow up, and yes, I will, but there’s time for that tomorrow. Today is for living.”

— Mark Lawrence

271. “Men like to talk about themselves and their achievements. Nona knew that much about men even if she was little.”

— Mark Lawrence

272. “It being Sunday, the cook prepared a special treat for us. Snails in garlic and wine, with saffron rice. The snails came from the local cliffs. A big variety as thick as a child’s arm. But let’s face it, snails are just slugs with a hat on.”

— Mark Lawrence

273. “There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything.”

— Mark Lawrence

274. “I don’t know what a bike is but it sounds painful.”

— Mark Lawrence

275. “Best she remember me as seven and not see me now.”

— Mark Lawrence

276. “A consequence of boredom is that a man is forced to look either to the future or the past, or sideways into his imagination.”

— Mark Lawrence

277. “Most of what a man is has been written by the time his beard starts to prickle. A babe is made of maybes. There are few crimes worse than the ending of something before its time.”

— Mark Lawrence

278. “I wondered once if Corion had put that sickness in me, if I were the tool and he the architect of that violence and cruelty. I wondered if having taken his head, if having grown from boy to man, I would be a better person. I wondered if I might be the man the Nuban wanted me to be, the man Tutor Lundist hoped for.”

— Mark Lawrence

279. “Some arguments require a knife if you’re to cut to the quick, others require the breaking of heads with a philosopher’s stone.”

— Mark Lawrence

280. “A predictable warrior, no matter how talented, will end up dead sooner than a less skilled warrior who can less easily be anticipated.”

— Mark Lawrence

281. “When the person you hit doesn’t have the grace to fall over, it’s generally best to have a backup plan.”

— Mark Lawrence

282. “Never drink small if it’s at someone else’s expense.”

— Mark Lawrence

283. “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.”

— Mark Lawrence

284. “In hospital they ask you to rate your discomfort on a scale of ten. I guess it’s the best they can come up with, but it fails to capture the nature of the beast. Pain can stay the same while you change around it. And, like a thumb of constant size, what it blocks out depends on how close it gets to you. At arm’s length a thumb obscures a small fragment of the day. Held close enough to your eye it can blind you to everything that matters, relegating the world to a periphery.”

— Mark Lawrence

285. “Shame can exert as much pressure as anger.”

— Mark Lawrence

286. “Watch out for that effelant. They’re green and like the taste of Vikings.”

— Mark Lawrence

287. “Children are like cats, only less useful and less furry.”

— Mark Lawrence

288. “I’ve never had much use for religion, except when it comes to swearing or begging for mercy.”

— Mark Lawrence

289. “Truth may often be the first casualty of war, but dignity is definitely the first casualty of disease.”

— Mark Lawrence

290. “I try to be a fair man, to live with honour, but come against me armed and looking to take my life, and you will not walk away again.”

— Mark Lawrence

291. “I’ll lick a leper’s neck before I take a lung-full o’ your stench, Brother Row.”

— Mark Lawrence

292. “Each hour became a process of taking a dull future and squeezing it into a dull past through the narrow slot of the moment.”

— Mark Lawrence

293. “A practised liar gets good at noticing the failings of those with less practice.”

— Mark Lawrence

294. “I kept my voice calm. It wasn’t hard, I was calm. Anger carries less horror with it, men understand anger. It promises resolution; maybe bloody resolution, but swift.”

— Mark Lawrence

295. “The cat is both alive and dead.” “Who mentioned a fecking cat?”

— Mark Lawrence

296. “Better a long ignoble life of shallow pleasures than a short stab at heroism, ending with a short stab. And just because one man plays another doesn’t always mean that it’s not the right direction for both of them.”

— Mark Lawrence

297. “Weakness is a contagion, one breath of it can corrupt a man whole and entire. Now though, even with all the evil in me, I don’t know if I could teach such lessons to a son of mine.”

— Mark Lawrence

298. “It’s when your power is taken, or given, away that you discover who your friends are, brother. There’s a lesson for us all in that.”

— Mark Lawrence

299. “But words are only words and they seldom turn a person from their path unless they want to be turned.”

— Mark Lawrence

300. “The trip from could to should is short and allows little time for reflection.”

— Mark Lawrence