Top 60 Steven Brust Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.”

— Steven Brust

2. “Plan. Yes. Good idea. I should come up with a plan.”

— Steven Brust

3. “Always speak politely to an enraged dragon.”

— Steven Brust

4. “One man’s mistake is another man’s opportunity.”

— Steven Brust

5. “Appropriate action means to advance your own goals, without unintentional harm to anyone else.”

— Steven Brust

6. “Don’t explain why it works; explain how you use it.”

— Steven Brust

7. “Short version: it doesn’t matter how many bad decisions you just made, your job is to make the next one correct.”

— Steven Brust

8. “Any point in a process looks like the process was leading up to it if that’s as far as you’ve gotten.”

— Steven Brust

9. “Most people seem to take pleasure in feeling superior to someone. I’m not like that, which pleases me because it makes me feel superior.”

— Steven Brust

10. “Staring into the dragon’s maw, one quickly learns wisdom.”

— Steven Brust

11. “You can’t put something together again unless you’ve torn it apart first.”

— Steven Brust

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

12. “But once you allow yourself to recognize necessity, you find two things: One you find your options so restricted that the only course of action is obvious, and, two, that a great sense of freedom comes with the decision.”

— Steven Brust

13. “There is no excuse for bad manners, except fast reflexes.”

— Steven Brust

14. “A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.”

— Steven Brust

15. “What foul sorcery is this?” she said. “Pretty standard foul sorcery; nothing special.” “Okay,” she said. “Just checking.”

— Steven Brust

16. “I’m told I’m very charming when people do what I want.”

— Steven Brust

17. “Chapter the Eleventh: In Which the Plot, Behaving in Much the Manner Of a Soup to which Corn Starch Has been Added, Begins, at Last, to Thicken.”

— Steven Brust

18. “People trying to force their agenda on my by deciding how I’m permitted to speak is offensive.”

— Steven Brust

19. “What’s the point of having weak enemies? They just waste your time.”

— Steven Brust

20. “And all of the late, late-night talks, when you’re not stoned, but you’re so tired you might as well be, when you just sit there glowing with warmth, and all of those things that you really hope for come out, and you connect with each other on such deep levels that, when you think about it the next day, you wonder if it was real – if the others felt it too.”

— Steven Brust

21. “Everybody generalizes from one example. At least, I do.”

— Steven Brust

22. “Captain,” said Khaavren, both by way of affirmation and correction, thus conveying the maximum amount of information in the fewest possible words; a custom of his, and one that this historian has, in fact, adopted for himself, holding efficiency of language to be a high virtue in all written works without exception.”

— Steven Brust

23. “I’d rather be running the game than playing it.”

— Steven Brust

24. “Why do you work so hard to make yourself disliked? I should think you’d find it happens enough on its own without putting yourself to any extra trouble.”

— Steven Brust

25. “It is always man’s ideas which drive his actions. This has, at times, resulted in great evil; but as we look around us, we cannot doubt that it has resulted in greater good.”

— Steven Brust

26. “If you’re trying to scare me,” I said, “it’s working.” “I can do a great deal more than scare you.” Where do they get this stuff? “Um, if I thought all you could do was scare me, you couldn’t scare me, if you see what I mean.” “We’ll see how funny you are in a little while.” I was mildly curious about that myself.”

— Steven Brust

27. “Snow, tenderly caught by eddying breezes, swirled and spun in to and out of bright, lustrous shapes that gleamed against the emerald-blazoned black drape of sky and sparkled there for a moment, hanging, before settling gently to the soft, green-tufted plain with all the sickly sweetness of an over-written sentence.”

— Steven Brust

28. “It’s just that no one wants to be the one being rescued, we all want to do the rescuing.”

— Steven Brust

29. “Saving someone’s life is a wonderful feeling. Try it. You feel like, if you don’t mind a TV reference, a big damn hero.”

— Steven Brust

30. “The creation of powerful magical tools, generally, is the result of one of three things: the desire to impress a lover; an accident while trying to create something else entirely; or a side project created to assist while working toward something considered more significant by the creator.”

— Steven Brust

31. “One nice thing about putting the thing away for a couple of months before looking at it is that you start appreciate your own wit. Of course, this can be carried too far. But it’s kind of cool when you crack up a piece of writing, and then realize you wrote it. I recommend this feeling.”

— Steven Brust

32. “But we’re assassins: when we make mistakes, people live.”

— Steven Brust

33. “I guess there’s just a time for doing dumb things.”

— Steven Brust

34. “There’s nothing worse than a smartass who pretends not to understand hyperbole.”

— Steven Brust

35. “I once had someone explain to me that we don’t have real interactions with people, we have interactions with the image of those people we carry in our heads. I don’t know. Maybe. But I figure if I stick a Great Weapon into a guy’s eye, it’s close enough to a real interaction for most purposes.”

— Steven Brust

36. “Pittsburgh. I’d been there. One of the most underrated cities in North America. People who’d never been there thought of it as a graveyard of abandoned steel mills, but it was a beautiful city, and it would be good to have it back.”

— Steven Brust

37. “I have a clever and devious plan.”

— Steven Brust

38. “She smiled at me. We were all friends here. Morrolan carried Blackwand, which slew a thousand at the Wall of Barrit’s Tomb. Aliera carried Pathfinder, which they say served a power higher than the Empire. Sethra carried Iceflame, which embodied within it the power of the Dzur Mountain. I carried myself rather well, thank you.”

— Steven Brust

39. “That’s what does it – that moment where you think you’re lost, and then discover that you’re not, that you’ve never really left. There’s something that happens in that incredible tiny no-time, and that something is like the revelation of learning.”

— Steven Brust

40. “I’m a decent cook. I’m an outstanding eater.”

— Steven Brust

41. “Minneapolis has two seasons: Road Removal and Snow Repair.”

— Steven Brust

42. “When you have understood the piece of the world you want to change, and aligned your will with the world as it actually is, then and only then can you begin to change it;.”

— Steven Brust

43. “A cheery receptionist met Donovan as he entered and said something with an upside-down question mark at the beginning.”

— Steven Brust

44. “Do you think it’s possible to discuss politics without preaching?”

— Steven Brust

45. “It isn’t always easy to act on what’s in your head instead of what’s in your heart. And it isn’t always right to. The whole trick to knowing what to do is deciding when to make yourself listen to your head, and when it’s okay to just follow your feelings.”

— Steven Brust

46. “Several years ago, I was getting drunk with four or five of the most powerful sorcerers in the Empire – like you do – when Daymar told a story.”

— Steven Brust

47. “I’ve heard it said: ‘By his home you shall know him’; and we all know that we must pay attention to anyone who reverses the subject and auxiliary verb in his sentence.”

— Steven Brust

48. “The door opened, and Ren emerged, and my heart did a thing.”

— Steven Brust

49. “Boss, what, exactly, are we doing here?” “Feeling maudlin.” “Oh. Good. How long are we planning on doing that?” “Don’t you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?” “What?” “Never mind.”

— Steven Brust

50. “Some things you just can’t fight, and sneezing is like falling in love. There’s little you can do about it, and it makes you look ridiculous and sometimes makes your eyes water.”

— Steven Brust