Daniel Polansky Quotes

It's a dangerous thing, pretense. A man ought to know who he is, even if he isn't proud to be it.

— Daniel Polansky

“I remember the lightning in the air, and the lovers bidding goodbye to each other in the streets, and I can tell you what I think. We went to war because going to war is fun, because there's something in the human breast that trills at the thought, although perhaps not the reality, of murdering its fellows in vast numbers. Fighting a war ain't fun - fighting a war is pretty miserable. But starting a war? Hell, starting a war is better than a night floating on daeva's honey.”

— Daniel Polansky

“I've heard people speak of themselves as addicted to reading, but I think those people never stole from their family so they could afford this month's serial, or sucked off a sailor for a new book of short stories.”

— Daniel Polansky

For a while a person is a junkie and a bartender or a junkie and a father or a junkie and a thief, but after a while he's just a junkie.

— Daniel Polansky

“The dangerous men were still asleep, their blades sheathed next to their beds. The really dangerous men had been up for hours, and their quills and ledgers were getting hard use.”

— Daniel Polansky

“Common wisdom affirms against the drinking of whiskey during daylight hours, and while I can see the merits of the argument, it is not one to which I hold. True, a few fingers of liquor, or even a wide-stretched palm, degrades your ability to cope with the world's troubles, miseries and horrors; but it also makes you less concerned about them, and since the world is certain to throw more at you than you can handle regardless, I think it a more than equitable transaction. People call me the Warden.
People call me a lot of things, but the Warden is the only one you could say inside a church.”

— Daniel Polansky

“There is a corner of every man's soul that would prefer him dead. That whispers poison in his ear in the still hours of the evening, puts spurs to his side when he stands atop a ledge. For the weak and the misbegotten, the suggestion alone proves sufficient, and the unfortunate runs himself a hot bath and adds his life-blood to it, or drinks a few pints of backyard whiskey and goes swimming in the canal. But most of us are too stubborn or cowardly to make a clean go of it, and this bit that hates us has to start thinking sly.”

— Daniel Polansky

“Evil is best served without a patina of hypocrisy.”

— Daniel Polansky

There are some things a man can't fake, and lethality is one of them-a lapdog might learn to howl, even bare its teeth on occasion, but that don't make it a wolf.

— Daniel Polansky

“It's an odd fact about lunatics and junkies, but every one I'd ever met is just dying to share their life wisdom.”

— Daniel Polansky

“The body can decay right in front of you, go from a tool that expresses your will to an anchor dragging you down to hell.”

— Daniel Polansky

“I wonder if you're fast as they say," Bessie Weasel chirruped, her hand slowly straying toward the belt.
"Wondering is free," Cinnabar said finally, his voice soft and low. "Certainty has its price".”

— Daniel Polansky

“If the human race has ever invented an institution more effective in the propagation of intellectual and ethical cripples than the nobility, I have yet to stumble across it.”

— Daniel Polansky

“The Questioner was repacking his tools with a vague air of disappointment. Deciding my legs were steady enough to carry me, I propped myself to my feet, then turned towards my would-be torturer. 'You got a cigarette?' I asked.
He shook his head, the burned red crown of his hood bobbing. 'I don't smoke,' he said without taking his eyes off his work. 'That stuff will kill you.”

— Daniel Polansky

“He was as happy as a pup on Christmas morning, as a maid on her wedding night, as a wolf before his bloody red supper.”

— Daniel Polansky

The lower you are on the pole, the more events seem to be governed by chance. Climb up a few steps and you realize that there's an order to the whole thing, the dice are loaded and the cards well marked.

— Daniel Polansky

“Odd, but no matter how high you rise in the halls of power, it's impossible to escape the conviction that our collective fates are largely determined by the petty jealousies of overgrown adolescents.”

— Daniel Polansky

“Thus far, the best that could be said for the day was that it was half over.”

— Daniel Polansky

Our language has yet to develop a proper send-off for leaving a close friend's deathbed.

— Daniel Polansky

“Every man and woman is distinct from every other. But every mob is the same mob, whether composed of mineworkers or monarchs.”

— Daniel Polansky

Don't believe I've had the pleasure," she began. "Are you mad? I had you last year at Lord Addington's spring formal! We went behind his pagoda and I took you from the rear. You said I was the best you'd ever had!" The color drained from her face-clearly she didn't find my scenario entirely implausible. Stammering an explanation she hurried off, leaving me to watch the celebration solo.

— Daniel Polansky

“It is a scientific fact that time is infinitely divisible, that each moment contains within it the fragments of a thousand others, and each of them can be splintered into a thousand more, and so on and so on.”

— Daniel Polansky

“A Frenchman, as any Frenchman will tell you, is a difficult condition to abide, as much a privilege as a responsibility. To maintain the appropriate standards of excellence, this superlative of grace, was a burden not so light even in the homeland, and immeasurably more difficult in the colonies. Being both French and a stoat had resulted in a more or less constant crisis of self-identity- one which Bonsoir often worked to resolve, in classic Gallic fashion, via monologue.”

— Daniel Polansky

“The Captain was halfway to the door when he felt the press of metal against his throat. "I am Bonsoir," the stoat hissed, a scant inch from the Captain's ears. "I have cracked rattlesnake eggs while their mother slept soundly atop them, I have snatched the woodpecker mid-flight. More have met their end at my hand than from corn liquor and poisoned bait! I am Bonsoir, whose steps fall without sound, whose knives are always sharp, who comes at night and leaves widows weeping in the morning.”

— Daniel Polansky

“Next to her a calico cat puffed away at a hubble-bubble. Puss's watch cost more than his vest, and his vest cost more than his boots, and his boots cost more than a house. If you stripped him naked and sold off his costume, you'd walk away with enough money to retire-though if you left him alive you wouldn't have long to enjoy it. The only thing that could rival Puss's vanity was his sadism.”

— Daniel Polansky

Be careful,' I hissed, then released him. 'Keep one eye on your back, and two on your best friend.'
'That's three eyes.'
'You'll need four to survive what's coming,' I said.

— Daniel Polansky

“Mexico doesn't have an emperor." "That is Mexico's misfortune, for all of the greatest countries have emperors.”

— Daniel Polansky

“When bowing to the inevitable, it's best to do so low, and quickly.”

— Daniel Polansky

“The rows of empty jugs had multiplied with the speed of caged rabbits.”

— Daniel Polansky

“The sort of creature whose wildest fantasies were filled with ledgers that balanced perfectly, and rows of clocks chiming in eternal unison.”

— Daniel Polansky

“Were the best of friends. One of them was likely to kill the other before long.”

— Daniel Polansky

“To exist without awareness, that was what you aimed at. Memories worn to irrelevance, the future equally insubstantial.”

— Daniel Polansky

“A lie was an admission of weakness, evidence that you needed to fear the target of your dishonesty.”

— Daniel Polansky

“On the walls were a series of paintings depicting the Duke in various elaborate situations. The Duke on a battlefield, the Duke at hunt, the Duke overlooking his lands, the Duke on the shitter. I made up that last one.”

— Daniel Polansky

“An inability to understand the weakness in his fellow men that left him barely more than competent in the internecine feuding at the heart of the Aelerian political machine. It”

— Daniel Polansky

“Duplicity was not the sole province of the capital, Bas knew, but the honest inheritance of the entire species.”

— Daniel Polansky

“Is not despair, nor melancholy destitution.”

— Daniel Polansky

“Experience does not necessarily lead to understanding,' the”

— Daniel Polansky

“Had Eudokia been granted divinity she'd have found something better to do with it than watching two old farts in ugly robes mutter gibberish over summer wine.”

— Daniel Polansky

“But then again what we seem to be is not always what we are.”

— Daniel Polansky

“The two old friends stood silently in the fading light, though you wouldn't have known it to look at them. That they were old friends, I mean. Anyone could see it was getting dark.”

— Daniel Polansky