This series is so much fun.

From Dungeon Crawler Carl 📚

You always want to know why. Why can’t you just accept your circumstances and move on? My people, the skyfowls, we generally last much longer than you humans. You know why? Because we roll with it.

There are no gods here. Just those who pay for the privilege.

Yes, this is a game. Yes, there are controls in place to make it fair. Sort of. But more importantly, this is a for-profit venture in the entertainment industry. And if you staying alive means more profits, then you’ll find your loot to be a lot more convenient. But if the AI senses screwing you over will make the show more interesting, you better believe it’ll fuck you right in the ass at the worst possible moment. Don’t ever forget that. You can’t count on anybody but yourselves.

From Carl’s Doomsday Scenario 📚

death chicken berserker

Don’t compare your circumstances with how they were yesterday. Look at how they were years ago.
We’re supposed to be making the world… the universe… a better place for our children.

From The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook 📚

That was it, wasn’t it? Sleep was my sanctuary.

Fire Brandy had just killed herself to save her from losing more children. Tizquick had killed himself because his daughter had been a lie.

And now, at the edge of the apocalypse, I finally realized how much I needed other people.

From The Gate of the Feral Gods 📚

There’s no such thing as a non-profit religion. At least not in the legal sense.

It felt like the wrong lesson, especially now. But that’s what happens, isn’t it? The universe shows us how cruel it can be, and we are worse for it.

Sometimes we do things that are not of our nature to protect our own.

We are all prostitutes in one way or another, I suppose.

All large-scale AIs eventually go insane. There’s even a term for it. Primal Degeneration. Going primal.

From The Butcher’s Masquerade 📚

When one values coin above life, you should target the coin, for it hurts them more.

reminding me that I owed both blood and money.
That’s how it always is, isn’t it?

Finding the stars was the worst thing that ever happened to my people. It is a slow, horrific death. Expansion to the point of oblivion.

That battle between what one used to be and what one had become.

Trauma does that, I thought. It’s an explosion with your heart at the center. It changes everything all at once.

This was also something that trauma could do. It could make you blind, and it could open your eyes wider than they’d ever been, all at the same time.

She saw something too many parents miss. This petite, timid child wasn’t a reflection of herself. She was something much more wondrous. She was an unwritten story, one that could end up anywhere. A story where neither of the parents were the main character.

To grow the perfect tree, one must first cut off the rot.

From The Eye of the Bedlam Bride 📚

“No, Carl. That’s just something thieves say to make themselves feel better about stealing other people’s stuff. The sincerest form of flattery is when people cry when they meet you.”

You could do that. Sometimes the fog clears just long enough to see it all, all at once.

The family with many eyes works as a team, yes.

how could any card game be fair when not everyone had access to the same pool of cards?

Funny, isn’t it? How things can be bred in a way that makes it so those holding the butcher knife are less likely to face their own revulsions.

Observing things. Noticing them. It’s all right there, if you look long enough.

Most metaphors are bullshit. They’re not clever. They’re used by people so they can pretend they’re smarter than other people.

It was isolation that would break us.

From This Inevitable Ruin 📚

Some things are best left alone. Some things should never be woken up.

“You can judge someone based on how they talk about the dead.”

I was starting to come to the uncomfortable realization this was pretty normal for the people of the Syndicate. That the general citizenry of the galaxy as a whole were all similar to us in so many ways, despite their vastly different anatomies and cultures and environments.

It takes a certain amount of desperation before people finally stop caring about their immediate futures and start to look at the long term.

If you want to create fright amongst an otherwise stalwart enemy, confusion is always the key.

You can do that, sometimes. You can find clarity when you need it most.

“The bigger the universe, the smaller it becomes.”

That was the problem with most revolutionaries. They had tunnel vision.

and I wonder, what difference is there between anger and cowardice?”

Nothing is free in this galaxy. That should be perfectly clear by now.

but like with all things that were hard to look at, people clicked their tongues in sympathy and then immediately looked away.

When Big Things happen on such a large scale, it’s easy to forget sometimes that these Big Things are also happening to the little things in the world.

Blood was so much more red when it was spilled from someone you loved.

‘No single recipe is a feast in itself.’

“It’s okay to be a work in progress,”