Quotes from R. Scott Bakker

Where no paths exist, a man strays only when he misses his destination. There is no crime, no transgression, no sin save foolishness or incompetence, and no obscenity save the tyranny of custom.

Saying 'I could have done more,' Zin, is what marks a man as a man and not a God.

If the world is a game whose rules are written by the God, and sorcerers are those who cheat and cheat, then who has written the rules of sorcery?

Achamian tossed his hands skyward in dismay. "Foolish boy! How many faiths are there? How many competing beliefs? And you would murder another on the slender hope that yours is somehow the only one?

Sometimes the Nonman would climb upon some wild pulpit, the mossed remains of a fallen tree, the humped back of a boulder, and paint wonders with his dark voice. Wonders and horrors both.

Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human.

Most men would rather die in deception than live in uncertainty.

all men are frauds. Some, the wise, fool only others. Others, the foolish, fool only themselves. And a rare few fool both others and themselves—they are the rulers of Men

You've learned the lesson,' Kellhus had said on one of those rare mornings when he shared her breakfast. 'What lesson might that be?' 'That the lessons never end.' He laughed, gingerly sipped his steaming tea. 'That ignorance is infinite.

So he came to realize that learning a language was perhaps the most profound thing a man could do. Not only did it require wrapping different sounds around the very movement of your soul, it involved learning things somehow already known, as though much of what he was somehow existed apart from him. A kind of enlightenment accompanied these first lessons, a deeper understanding of self.

Doubt, he would say, set men free … Doubt, not truth! Beliefs were the foundation of actions. Those who believed without doubting, he would say, acted without thinking. And those who acted without thinking were enslaved.

You can count the bruises on your heart easily enough, but numbering sins is a far tricker matter. Men are eternally forgetting for their benefit. They leave it to the World to remeber, and to the Outside to call them to harsh accout. One hundred Heavens . . . for one thousand Hells.

When a man possesses the innocence of a child, we call him a fool. When a child possesses the cunning of a man, we call him an abomination. As with love, knowledge has its seasons.

Let us be moved, you and I, by the things themselves. Let us discover each other.

The vulgar think the God by analogy to man and so worship Him in the form of the Gods. The learned think the God by analogy to principles and so worship Him in the form of Love or Truth. But the wises think the God not at all. They know that thought, which is finite, can only do violence to the God, who is infinite. It is enough, they say, that the God thinks them.

Old women are more reconciled to death than old men. By bringing life to the world, we come to see ourselves as debtors. What's given is taken.

No soul moves alone through the world, Leweth. Our every thought stems from the thoughts of others. Our every word is but a repetition of world spoken before. Every time we listen, we allow the movements of another should to carry our own...NO one's soul moves alone, Leweth. When one love dies, on must learn to love another.

Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.

Sit with a merchant or sit with a beggar, and it'll always be the beggar who buys your first drink.

Mystery made thing gigantic. Knowledge made small.

When one believed, one´s soul moved. When one didn´t, everything else moved.

What if the choice isn't between certainties, between this faith and that, but between faith and doubt? Between renouncing the mystery and embracing it?

We belittle what we cannot bear. We make figments out of fundamentals, all in the name of preserving our own peculiar fancies. The best way to secure one's own deception is to accuse others of deceit.

One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten.