A quote...

[forsyth]

"...But a THIEF... a thief has no mother. A thief looks to no king. A thief can stand where others cannot! And this, amongst all the many powers the thinking beast can hold, is a power to be held in high respect. A true thief is intimidated neither by riches nor by high office, nor by sword or broad chest! A thief who gives into fear is not a thief at all! A true thief is afraod of no strength or rule, mortal or divine! For all strengths and rules opposing a thief are but stones in his path, to be mastered or avoided, or failing that, DIED upon!

...

..Following rules lets a man or woman or child acts in clear conscience regardless of what they do. So when a thief breaks those rules; when a thief chooses his own actions, any good or evil he causes is his alone to bear!"

From Thieves and Kings, Issue 6, the last part of the first collection. Seriously, go read it, folks. I found this comic long after I'd already started writing stuff for Fors, but that, and most of the whole speech I took it from, really sums up quite a bit of stuff pretty darn well.

Comments

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

I didn't mention "the devil made me do it" in any way shape or form, really. Well, the "rules" and "mortal or divine" bit, perhaps, but. There's more petty evils too, that are justified by being laws, things people do "because that's how things are," and so they don't even think about it. That's what it's aimed at, more the everyday little evil things, where people can shrug and go "Well, just doing what everyone else was/following orders/enforcing the law/etc. The point of the quote is that the thief, by being outside that structure, has to choose what to do, about everything, even the little things, and can't say "oh, that's how things are." Not about rule-BREAKERS, about people who follow the rules, even if the rules are bad. And the rest of the quote mentions how they knew that, as children, but got bogged down by things.

[leticia.livejournal.com]

Whoooosh.

Dude, you're missing the point: you're saying that thieves et al are more ...I don't know, 'honest' because they can't hide their bad deeds behind the moral justification of being legal, or being required by the law.

...totally missing the fact that there are plenty of other moral justifications people use that can leave them happy and care free and they break the rules to screw their neighbor over. Re: George Bush. Re: Kenneth Lay. Legal? No. Got away with it? Yes. Screwed people over? Yes. Feel guilty? Not a bit.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

I think that WOOOSH! would be the sound of us talking completely past each other.

Guess it's time to play "putting the quote in context"!

Firstly, neither the quote, nor I, were referring to literal real world thieves, in the "taking stuff that's not yours" sense. For one, as Fors would say, "Any idiot can do that". For two, Thieves and Kings, as well as the Fors stuff, is fantasy, with a good bit of myth and fairy tales. Thief in this sense is an archetype, and one of the main things about the thief archetype is it's somebody who's outside the system. So this isn't in any way literal, it's story and myth and metaphor.

And, to put the quote further in context, the quotes come from a flashback Rubel (the thief side of Thieves and Kings) is remembering, about what he was told when he was a child, by a Royal Guard, after saying he wanted to be a thief. I can put the whole long speechy thing up in the main part, and maybe I should.