"No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will cramp his style"
About this Quote
Magic is glamorous right up until it meets anatomy. Steven Brust’s line punctures the fantasy genre’s favorite inflationary habit: treating power as destiny. The joke lands because it’s brutally literal. “No matter how subtle the wizard” flatters the archetype we’ve been trained to revere - the mastermind with layered contingencies, the chess player of reality. Then the sentence swerves into street logic: a knife between the shoulder blades. Not a duel, not a prophecy, not a “true name,” just an ambush. The punchline is that physics, chance, and social violence still get a vote.
The subtext is classed and political. Wizards in fantasy often function like aristocrats: insulated by knowledge, ceremony, and systems that presume their importance. Brust (especially in the Vlad Taltos milieu) likes to remind readers that hierarchies are not moral facts; they’re arrangements maintained until someone breaks the rules. A knife in the back is the weapon of the powerless, or at least the uncredentialed - a refusal to play the “proper” game where the elite can leverage their advantages.
“Cramp his style” does extra work: it’s slangy, almost dismissive, reducing epic conflict to a petty inconvenience. That tonal mismatch is the point. Brust isn’t just saying “wizards can die.” He’s mocking the idea that sophistication equals invulnerability. In a genre obsessed with cleverness, the line argues for a nastier realism: strategy is only as good as the assumptions it can’t control, and the world is full of people willing to skip the formalities.
The subtext is classed and political. Wizards in fantasy often function like aristocrats: insulated by knowledge, ceremony, and systems that presume their importance. Brust (especially in the Vlad Taltos milieu) likes to remind readers that hierarchies are not moral facts; they’re arrangements maintained until someone breaks the rules. A knife in the back is the weapon of the powerless, or at least the uncredentialed - a refusal to play the “proper” game where the elite can leverage their advantages.
“Cramp his style” does extra work: it’s slangy, almost dismissive, reducing epic conflict to a petty inconvenience. That tonal mismatch is the point. Brust isn’t just saying “wizards can die.” He’s mocking the idea that sophistication equals invulnerability. In a genre obsessed with cleverness, the line argues for a nastier realism: strategy is only as good as the assumptions it can’t control, and the world is full of people willing to skip the formalities.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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