It would not show if you did not know.

“The years never seem to weigh on Brother Maical, as if his inability to count their passing protects him from their passage. He watches the world through calm grey eyes, broad-chested, thick-limbed. If no one told you that his thoughts rattle in an empty head, you might think Brother Maical as capable a rogue as rides among the Brothers. In battle though his hands grow clever, and you’d think him whole, until the din fades, the dying fall, and Maical wanders the field weeping.”

– The King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

FESTERING WOUNDS AND BARREN LANDS

“And, because in some hard core of me, in some stubborn trench of selfish refusal, I could not, even at ten years of age, surrender to anything or anyone, I fought that pain. I analysed its offensive, and found its lines of attack. It festered, like the corruption in a wound turned sour, drawing strength from me. I knew enough to know the remedy. Hot iron for infection, cauterize, burn, make it pure. I cut from myself all the weakness of care. The love for my dead, I put aside, secure in a casket, an object of study, a dry exhibit, no longer bleeding, cut loose, set free. The capacity for new love, I burned out. I watered it with acid until the ground lay barren and nothing there would sprout, no flower take root.”

– Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE

“I walked in a cocoon of silence, with nothing but the soft words of the rain, and the sound of my boots on the Lichway. I’ll tell you now. The silence almost beat me. It’s the silence that scares me. It’s a blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment.”

– Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence