The Tower of the Swallow Quotes

“Why should I give up revenge? On behalf of what? Moral principles? And what of the higher order of things, in which evil deeds are punished? For you, a philosopher and ethicist, an act of revenge is bad, disgraceful, unethical and illegal. But I ask: where is the punishment for evil? Who has it and grants access? The Gods, in which you do not believe? The great demiurge-creator, which you decided to replace the gods with? Or maybe the law? [...] I know what evil is afraid of. Not your ethics, Vysogota, not your preaching or moral treaties on the life of dignity. Evil is afraid of pain, mutilation, suffering and at the end of the day, death! The dog howls when it is badly wounded! Writhing on the ground and growls, watching the blood flow from its veins and arteries, seeing the bone that sticks out from a stump, watching its guts escape its open belly, feeling the cold as death is about to take them. Then and only then will evil begin to beg, 'Have mercy! I regret my sins! I'll be good, I swear! Just save me, do not let me waste away!'. Yes, hermit. That is the way to fight evil! When evil wants to harm you, inflict pain - anticipate them, it's best if evil does not expect it. But if you fail to prevent evil, if you have been hurt by evil, then avenge him! It is best when they have already forgotten, when they feel safe. Then pay them in double. In triple. An eye for an eye? No! Both eyes for an eye! A tooth for a tooth? No! All their teeth for a tooth! Repay evil! Make it wail in pain, howling until their eyes pop from their sockets. And then, you can look under your feet and boldly declare that what is there cannot endanger anyone, cannot hurt anyone. How can someone be a danger, when they have no eyes? How can someone hurt when they have no hands? They can only wait until they bleed to death.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“No one wants to suffer. But that is the fate of each. And some suffer more. Not necessarily of their own volition. It's not about to enduring the suffering. It's about how you endure it.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“It is better to go forward without a goal, than to have a goal and stay in one place, and it is certainly better than to stay in one place without a goal.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“Lepiej bez celu iść naprzód niż bez celu stać w miejscu, a z pewnością o niebo lepiej, niż bez celu się cofać.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“They are not demons, not devils...
Worse than that.
They are people.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“For I must tell you, gentle reader, that Geralt the Witcher was always a modest, prudent and composed man, with a soul as simple and uncomplicated as the shaft of a halberd.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“You won't do it.' Bonhart's voice resounded in the complete silence. 'You won't do it, witcher girl. In Kaer Morhen you were taught how to kill, so you kill like a machine. Instinctively. To kill yourself you need character, strength, determination and courage. And they couldn't teach you that.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“Każdy sen, ten czarowny i piękny, zbyt długo śniony zamienia się w koszmar. A z takiego budzimy się z krzykiem.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“And you? Don't you have dreams now?'
'I do,' he said bitterly. 'But seldom since we crossed the Yaruga. And I remember nothing after waking. Something has ended in me, Cahir. Something has burned out. Something has ruptured in me . . .'
'Never mind, Geralt. I shall dream for both of us.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“Dandelion! You’re asleep in the saddle!’ ‘I’m not asleep. I’m thinking creatively!”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of Swallows

“And now he was glowing with happiness, pride and a sense of importance, like every liar when his lies accidentally turn out to be true.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of Swallows

“Had someone crept up to the cottage with the sunken thatched roof that night, had they peered through the slits in the shutters, they would have seen in the dimly lit interior a grey-bearded old man and an ashen-haired girl sitting by the fireplace. They would have noticed that the two of them were staring silently into the glowing, ruby coals. But no one could have seen it. For the cottage with the sunken, moss-grown thatched roof was well hidden among the fog and the mist, in a boundless swamp in the Pereplut Marshes where no one dared to venture.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of Swallows

“And so it's an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? Blood for blood? And for that blood, more blood? A sea of blood? Do you want to drown the world in blood? O naive, damaged girl! Is that how you mean to fight evil, little witcher?”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“Draw me not without reason; sheath me not without honour”.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of Swallows

“- Знаешь, Цири, что даёт человеку университетское образование?
- Нет. Что?
- Умение пользоваться источниками.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“Mamma, are they demons? Is it the Wild Hunt? Phantoms from hell? Mamma, mamma! Quiet, quiet, children. They are not demons, not devils . . . Worse than that. They are people.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of the Swallow

“Anyone,’ Avallac’h wiped his hands on a rag, ‘can foretell the future. And everyone does it, for it is simple. It is no great art to foretell it. The art is in foretelling it accurately.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of Swallows

“Nothing is as it seems,’ Ciri replied, blushing again.

‘An accurate statement,’ said the hermit, while adding another skin to the appropriate lot. ‘And how inevitably it leads to the conclusion that we, Ciri, we know nothing about each other. We know only the appearances and they lie.’

He waited a moment, but Ciri did not hasten to say anything.

‘Although we both have succeeded in making a preliminary inquiry, we still don’t know anything. I do not know who you are, you do not know who I am…’

This time he deliberately waited. She looked at him and her eyes burned with the question he was expecting. Her eyes flashed when she asked:

‘Who will start?”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“For the law is not jurisprudence, not a weighty tome full of articles, not philosophical treatises, not peevish nonsense about justice, not hackneyed platitudes about morality and ethics. The law means safe paths and highways. It means backstreets one can walk along even after sundown. It means inns and taverns one can leave to visit the privy, leaving one’s purse on the table and one’s wife beside it. The law is the sleep of people certain they’ll be woken by the crowing of the rooster and not the crashing of burning roof timbers! And for those who break the law; the noose, the axe, the stake and the red-hot iron! Punishments which deter others.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of Swallows

“Muchos de entre los que viven merecen morir y algunos de los que mueren merecen la vida. ¿Puedes devolver la vida? Entonces no te apresures a dispensar la muerte, pues ni el más sabio conoce el fin de todos los caminos.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“I’ve stopped being a witcher. I’ve learned that now. On Thanedd, in the Tower of the Seagull. In Brokilon. On the bridge on the Yaruga. In the cave beneath Gorgon. And here, in Myrkvid Forest. No, I’m not a witcher now. So I’ll have to learn to manage without my medallion.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of Swallows

“Y a nosotros no nos queda más que la venganza. Una venganza terrible y cruel, de la que todavía circularán leyendas dentro de cien años. Leyendas que la gente temerá escuchar cuando caiga la noche.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“Instead of codes, articles and peevish platitudes about justice, your idea creates lawlessness, anarchy, the licence and self-serving of princelings and mandarins, the officiousness of careerists wanting to endear themselves to their superiors, the blind vindictiveness of fanatics, the cruelty of assassins, retribution and sadistic vengeance. Your vision is a world where people are afraid to venture out after dark; not for fear of cut-throats, but of the guardians of public order. For, after all, the result of all great crackdowns on miscreants is always that the miscreants enter the ranks of the guardians of public order en masse. Your vision is a world of bribery, blackmail and entrapment, a world of turning imperial evidence and false witnesses. A world of snoopers and coerced confessions. Informing and the fear of being informed upon. And inevitably the day will come in your world when the flesh of the wrong person will be torn with pincers, when an innocent person is hanged or impaled. And then it will be a world of crime.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of Swallows

“Cahir, wrinkling his brow imperiously, shouted back something menacing about imperial service, backing up his words with the classically military and ever effective ‘for fuck’s sake’.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of Swallows

“It isn't the evil and indecent who are flung down into the depths, no! Oh, no! The evil and decisive fling down those who are moral, honest and noble but maladroit, hesitant and full of scruples.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“You are not. The sword is for her, not for you. Come here, girl with a collar on her neck. Examine the marks etched into the blade. You don’t understand them, naturally. But I shall explain them to you. Look. The line delineated by destiny is winding, but leads to this tower. Towards annihilation, towards the destruction of established values, of the established order. But there, above the tower, do you see? A swallow. The symbol of hope. Take this sword. And may what is to come about, come about.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of the Swallow

“No. I'm a witcher! When they were teaching me, I swore I would act against Evil. Always. And without thinkin...'
'Because when you start thinking,' she added hollowly, 'killing stops making sense. Revenge stops making sense.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of the Swallow

“- A ty? Ty nie miewasz już snów?
- Miewam - powiedział z goryczą. - Ale od przekroczenia Jarugi bardzo rzadko. I w ogóle ich nie pamiętam po przebudzeniu. Coś się we mnie skończyło, Cahir. Coś się wypaliło. Coś się we mnie urwało...
- To nic, Geralt. Ja będę śnił za nas obu.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“I've never understood why the majority of human curses and insults refer to the erotic sphere. Sex is wonderful and associated with beauty, joy and pleasure. How can the names of the sexual organs be used as a vulgar synonym for ̶”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“Troops! Call out the troops!’ shouted another miner, shooing away children who–as is the immemorial custom of all the world’s children–had appeared from nowhere to watch and get in the way.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Tower of Swallows