The Black Library Quotes

“Loken tried to imagine the future, but the image would not form. Death would wipe them all from history. Not even the great First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon would survive forever. There would be a time when Abaddon no longer waged bloody war across the territories of humanity.
Loken sighed. That would be a sad day indeed. Men would cry out for Abaddon’s return, but he would never come.
He tried to picture the manner of his own death. Fabled, imaginary combats flashed through his mind. He imagined himself at the Emperor’s side, fighting some great, last stand against an unknown foe. Primarch Horus would be there, of course. He had to be. It wouldn’t be the same without him. Loken would battle, and die, and perhaps even Horus would die, to save the Emperor at the last.
Glory. Glory, like he’d never known. Such an hour would become so ingrained in the minds of men that it would be the cornerstone of all that came after. A great battle, upon which human culture would be based.
Then, briefly, he imagined another death. Alone, far away from his comrades and his Legion, dying from cruel wounds on some nameless rock, his passing as memorable as smoke.
Loken swallowed hard. Either way, his service was to the Emperor, and his service would be true to the end.”
― Dan Abnett, Horus Rising

“Mankind has proven to be pathologically incapable of learning from its own mistakes. It blithely remembers the witness of history, but it does not apply the knowledge it gains.”
― Dan Abnett, Saturnine

“There must come a moment when the soul knows: this far, and no further. But we are cursed never to hear that warning until it is too late.’
– attributed to the remembrancer Ignace Karkasy [M31]”
― James Swallow, Garro: Knight Of Grey

“Do not pity those who are lost on the path. Pity those who reach its end, and see at last what they were seeking."

- Malcador the Sigillite”
― John French, Ahriman: Gates of Ruin

“I love mirrors,’ he had once heard Fulgrim say. ‘They let one pass through the surface of things.”
― Graham McNeill, The Reflection Crack'd

“But what was a scar, really? Neither evidence of defeat, nor a medal of triumph. A scar was nothing more than a mark to show that a warrior faced his enemies at all times, never once showing his back.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Butcher's Nails

“All things in this grand universe are linked to one another by invisible threads, even those things that appear as opposites.”
― Graham McNeill, The Reflection Crack'd

“Everyone is a kind of story that they tell themselves.”
― Guy Haley, Flesh and Steel

“My Legion–’ Magnus’s face creased with rising anger ‘–was backed into a corner. My Thousand Sons died because of your treachery, because of the venom you whispered in Horus’s ears to start this insanity. He calls it his rebellion, but we both know the first heart to turn traitor was the one beating in your chest.’
Lorgar laughed again, the sound one of unfeigned delight. ‘See? The blame always lies with one of us unworthy souls. Never with you for making the wrong compacts with the gods that you deny are even real!’
The parchments on Lorgar’s armour flapped in the sudden wind of Magnus’s ire. The Word Bearer stood unfazed, his serene smile boiling his brother’s blood. The sorcerer’s skin quivered, beetles writhing beneath it as witch-lightning danced across his coppery flesh. Magnus moved, his body forming from the air itself, shaped out of the poison behind reality’s veil. Anger drove him into true incarnation.
‘That is enough, Lorgar.’
Lorgar nodded. ‘It is. I’ve no desire to trade insults. We’ve all made mistakes, it’s how we deal with the aftermath that matters.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Betrayer

“The realities of pitched warfare rarely made it into the sagas. In all the stories he’d heard, especially those woeful diatribes from the remembrancers, battle was reduced to a handful of heroes going blade-to-blade in the sunlight, while their nameless lessers looked on in stupefied awe.
It took a great deal to make Khârn cringe, but war poetry never failed.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Betrayer

“Argel Tal often said that Fate had a vicious sense of humour. Khârn never doubted it for a second.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Betrayer

“‘Victory comes,’ Angron smiled, showing a crescent of bloody teeth, ‘to the last man standing.’”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Betrayer

“‘Who are you to say that I may not sit at this hearth? Am I not as you? Did we not once break bread, laugh, bleed and weep together? Am I not the one who set off into the world at your side till paths and time set our steps towards different suns? Am I not returned to this place called home, weary with time and the weight of the sword? Is the only rest you would give me that of the bed of knives? Shall we not sit and talk and remember that once we were brothers?’
– from the Voice of the Stones, pre-unification Terra, exact era and author unknown”
― John French, Cthonia's Reckoning

“Presence of mind in all things, I counsel. Be aware of thyself before all else.”
― Gav Thorpe, Luther: First of the Fallen

“As I said, be careful from whom one gains knowledge and be aware of the price of its acquisition.”
― gav Thorpe, Luther: First of the Fallen

“It was going to be a long night.”
― Guy Haley

“What better mirror is there than the face of an old friend? Only those we love have the power to show us our true selves.”
― Graham McNeill, The Reflection Crack'd

“The horde had the numbers to bring about the war’s end, while the defenders only possessed the numbers to delay it – but the losses were going to be grotesque. Ulienne didn’t want to die for the Emperor’s stubbornness. She wanted to live, to see the Warmaster’s ambitions come to fruition. She wanted the Imperium that Horus had promised. An empire for eternity. A kingdom of humanity that would never fall.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden

“There it was again, the treasonous little notion Ulienne couldn’t quite shake. Horus was a hero, the Warmaster of the Imperium, the pacifier of the galaxy. Of course she’d followed him. The Legio Audax had willingly worn his colours and cast their fate with his. But what would be left after this war? What would be left of Terra and the armies fighting to take it?
Surely even now, quiescent alien kingdoms at the Imperium’s edges were reawakening, daring to cast jealous eyes at the worlds they’d lost in the Great Crusade. Would there be enough of the Warmaster’s hosts left to hold the Imperium in its entirety? And what would those hosts look like, with all order and discipline and humanity raked out of them? The Legiones Astartes were already blood-maddened and fighting by the side of those… those things. The regiments of Imperial Army wearing the Warmaster’s Eye were no better. Ulienne Grune didn’t want peace. Peace was boring. Peace was for the weak. She wanted wars she could win.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Echoes of Eternity

“After thirty thousand years, warfare had come full circle.
The sheer scale of humanity’s conflicts disregarded the corrupt reliance on automation as seen in the Dark Age of Technology. Mankind was back down to swords beating against shields and men entrenched with their rifles, where the gods of myth were Titan war machines and Baneblade tanks.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden

“The concept of luck flew in the face of the Omnissiah’s divine plan and was therefore a falsehood.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Echoes of Eternity

“We need to appreciate what we have and strive for what we can achieve, rather than reach for what’s denied to us.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Betrayer

“The ramparts were infinite. So was his will.”
― David Annandale, Castellan

“With creation and function came peace. With mental fortitude came strength and the banishment of weakness.”
― Nick Kyme, Feat of Iron

“They come to us because they’re jealous, lustful, or their minds have gone. I had a man tell my processors his own mother had fallen to the dark. He wanted to take her hab-unit. Three metres square, stinking like a grox-pen, underground, unheated. But it would have been his.”
― Chris Wraight, The Carrion Throne

“To break with ritual is to break with faith, brother...”
― Alec Worley, Stormseeker

“One mind is sometimes all it takes to change fate,’ Ulthran said defiantly.”
― Guy Haley, The Beheading

“I’m not sure you even know where your truths end and your lies begin.”
― Richard S. Ford, Stealing Orpheon

“He took a deep breath. He felt the fear and wrapped his heart around it. He let it inhabit his whole being until there was nothing left of him. He looked up.”
― J.H. Archer, The Resting Places

“Oh, Emperor, how you love to test me.”
― Guy Haley