Homeland Quotes

“Station is the paradox of the world of my people, the limitation of our power within the hunger for power. It is gained through treachery and invites treachery against those who gain it. Those most powerful in Menzoberranzan spend their days watching over their shoulders, defending against the daggers that would find their backs. Their deaths usually come from the front." -Drizzt Do'Urden”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“There is no pain greater than this; not the cut of a jagged-edged dagger nor the fire of a dragon's breath. Nothing burns in your heart like the emptiness of losing something, someone, before you truly have learned of its value.”
― Robert Salvatore, Homeland

“What place is this,” Drizzt asked the cat quietly, “that I call home? These are my people, by skin and by heritage, but I am no kin to them. They are lost and ever will be. “How many others are like me, I wonder?” Drizzt whispered, taking one final look. “Doomed souls, as was Zaknafein, poor Zak. I do this for him, Guenhwyvar; I leave as he could not, His life has been my lesion, a dark scroll etched by the heavy price exacted by Matron Malice’s evil promises. “Goodbye, Zack!” he cried, his voice rising in final defiance. “My father. Take heart, as do I, that when we meet again, in a life after this, it will surely not be in the hellfire our kin are doomed to endure.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“To lose is to die! You may win a thousand fights, but you can only lose one!”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“Nothing burns in your heart like the emptiness of losing something, someone, before you truly have learned of its value.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“They are a lie, as our-no, your peole are a lie!" "Your skin is as dark as mine"' Malice reminded him. "You are a drow, though you have never learned what that means!" "Oh, I do know what it menas." "Then act by the rules!" Matron Malcius demanded. "Your rules? Drizzt growled back. "But your rules are a damned lie as well, as great as lie as that filthy spider you claim as a deity!" "A ture god damn you all!" "And damn that Spider Qyeen as well!”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“Do more than survive, my son, as I have survived. Live! Be true to the callings in your heart.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“... and a third had died in his bunk of natural causes - for a dagger in the heart quite naturally ends one's life.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“Truth, though, is nothing in the face of self-falsehood, and principles are of no value if the idealist cannot live up to his own standards.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“As you will,” Malice agreed, not surprised at Zak’s desire to prove her wrong. Zak placed little value in wizardry, preferring the hilt of a blade to the crystal rod component of a lightning bolt. Zak moved to stand before Drizzt and handed him the coin. “Flip it.” Drizzt shrugged, wondering what this vague conversation between his mother and the weapons master was all about. Until now, he had heard nothing of any future profession being planned for him, or of this place called Sorcere. With a consenting shrug of his shoulders, he slid the coin onto his curled index finger and snapped it into the air with his thumb, easily catching it. He then held it back out to Zak and gave the weapons master a confused look, as if to ask what was so important about such an easy task. Instead of taking the coin, the weapons master pulled another from his neck-purse. “Try both hands,” he said to Drizzt, handing it to him. Drizzt shrugged again, and in one easy motion, put the coins up and caught them. Zak turned an eye on Matron Malice. Any drow could have performed that feat, but the ease with which this one executed the catch was a pleasure to observe. Keeping a sly eye on the matron, Zak produced two more coins. “Stack two on each hand and send all four up together,” he instructed Drizzt. Four coins went up. Four coins were caught. The only parts of Drizzt’s body that had even flinched were his arms. “Two-hands,” Zak said to Malice. “This one is a fighter. He belongs in Melee-Magthere.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“He put his head down and charged at the mirror. Perhaps it was a teleportation door to another section of the city, perhaps a simple doorway to a room beyond. Or perhaps, Alton dared to imagine in those few desperate seconds, this was some interplanar gate that would being him into a strange and unknown plane of existence!
He felt the tingling excitement of adventure pulling him on as he neared the wonderer thing - then he felt only the impact, the shattering glass, and the unyielding stone wall behind it.
Perhaps it was just a mirror.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“They live with the belief that anything is acceptable if you can get away with it, that self-gratification is the most important aspect of existence, and that power comes only to she or he who is strong enough and cunning enough to snatch it from the failing hands of those who no longer deserve it. Compassion has no place in Menzoberranzan, and yet it is compassion, not fear, that brings harmony to most races. It is harmony, working toward shared goals, that precedes greatness.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“Two-hands,” Zak said more emphatically. Matron Malice motioned for him to continue, unable to deny the grace of her youngest son’s display. “Could you do it again?” Zak asked Drizzt. With each hand working independently, Drizzt soon had the coins stacked atop his index fingers, ready to flip. Zak stopped him there and pulled out four more coins, building each of the piles five high. Zak paused a moment to study the concentration of the young drow (and also to keep his hands over the coins and ensure that they were brightened enough by the warmth of his body heat for Drizzt to properly see them in their flight). “Catch them all, Secondboy,” he said in all seriousness. “Catch them all, or you will land in Sorcere, the school of magic. That is not where you belong!” Drizzt still had only a vague idea of what Zak was talking about, but he could tell from the weapons master’s intensity that it must be important. He took a deep breath to steady himself, then snapped the coins up. He sorted their glow quickly, discerning each individual item. The first two fell easily into his hands, but Drizzt saw that the scattering pattern of the rest would not drop them so readily in line. Drizzt exploded into action, spinning a complete circle, his hands an indecipherable blur of motion. Then he straightened suddenly and stood before Zak. His hands were in fists at his sides and a grim look lay on his face. Zak and Matron Malice exchanged glances, neither quite sure of what had happened. Drizzt held his fists out to Zak and slowly opened them, a confident smile widening across his childish face. Five coins in each hand. Zak blew a silent whistle. It had taken him, the weapons master of the house, a dozen tries to complete that maneuver with ten coins. He walked over to Matron Malice. “Two-hands,” he said a third time. “He is a fighter, and I am out of coins.” “How many could he do?” Malice breathed, obviously impressed in spite of herself. “How many could we stack?” Zaknafein shot back with a triumphant smile.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“Es la compasión, no el miedo, lo que crea armonía en la mayoría de las razas, y es la armonía -la unión para conseguir metas compartidas- lo que precede a la grandeza.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“What place is this that is my world; what dark coil has my spirit embodied?” he whispered the angry disclaimer that had always been a part of him. “In light, I see my skin as black; in darkness, it glows white in the heat of this rage I cannot dismiss.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“Never does a star grace this land with a poet’s light of twinkling mysteries, nor does the sun send to here its rays of warmth and life.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“Evil empires often bound themselves in webs of hate toward fabricated enemies, and none in the history of the world were better at it than the drow.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“A true god damn you all!”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“Zak was able to smile at situations that didn’t necessarily bring pain to anyone. He was the first drow Drizzt had met who was apparently content with his station in life. Zak was the first drow Drizzt had ever heard laugh.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“And damn that Spider Queen as well!”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“What place is this,” Drizzt asked the cat quietly, “that I call home? These are my people, by skin and by heritage, but I am no kin to them. They are lost and ever will be. “How many others are like me, I wonder?”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“a third had died in his bunk of natural causes—for a dagger in the heart quite naturally ends one’s life.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“They live with the belief that anything is acceptable if you can get away with it, that self-gratification is the most important aspect of existence, and that power comes only to she or he who is strong enough and cunning enough to snatch it from the failing hands of those who no longer deserve”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“There is no pain greater than this; not the cut of a jagged-edged dagger nor the fire of a dragon’s breath. Nothing burns in your heart like the emptiness of losing something, someone, before you truly have learned of its value. Often now I lift my cup in a futile toast, an apology to ears that cannot hear:”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“What place is this that is my world; what dark coil has my spirit embodied?" he whispered the angry disclaimer that had always been a part of him.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“In light, I see my skin as black; in darkness, it glows white in the heat of this rage I cannot dismiss.
Would that I had the courage to depart, this place or his life, or to stand openly against the wrongness that is the world of theses, my kin. To seek an existence that does not run afoul to that which I believe, and to that which I hold dear faith is true.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“Truth, though, is nothing in the face of self-falsehood, and principles are of no value if the idealist cannot live up to his own standards”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“There is a silence here, profound and foreboding, the crouched hush of a predator at work. Too often the only sound, the only reminder to travelers in the Underdark that they have not lost their sense of hearing altogether, is a distant and echoing drip of water, beating like the heart of a beast, slipping through the silent stones to the deep Underdark pools of chilled water. What lies beneath the still onyx surface of these pools one can only guess. What secrets await the brave, what horrors await the foolish, only the imagination can reveal—until the stillness is disturbed. This is the Underdark.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“For five long years Vierna devoted almost every waking moment to the care of baby Drizzt. In drow society, this was not so much nurturing time as indoctrinating time.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“Any watching the battle would have found no breath in the next few blurring moments. Never had the Underdark witnessed such a vicious fight as when these two masters of the blade each attacked the demon possessing the other—and himself.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland