Quotes from Steven Erikson

Life is like a clam," Birds Mottle's father once told her. "Years filtering shit then some bastard cracks you open and scrapes you into its damned mouth.

Laws are broken. Existence holds to no laws. Existence is what persists, and to persist is to struggle. In the end, the struggle fails. That is the only law worthy of the name.

Strange how a land untraveled can look so familiar" Mappo blinked, the memories scattered by the sound of that familiar soft voice. He glanced up at Icarium. "Stranger still how the mind's eye can travel so far and so fast, yet return in an instant" The Jhag smiled. "With that eye you might explore the entire world" "With that eye you might escape it".

A civilization for ever within easy reach of a blade had little to boast about.

He'd seen enough of life to know he wouldn't miss it much. His only regret was the grief his death would level upon those who cared for him. Venes

There is but one god, and its name is beauty. There is but one kind of worship, and that is love. There is for us but one world, and we have scarred it beyond recognition.

Crowd control.' 'Excuse me?' 'That's all civilization is, T'riss. A means by which we manage the proliferation of our kind. It increases in complexity the more of us there are. Laws keep us muzzled and punishment delivers the necessary message when those laws are broken. Civilizations in decline are notable when certain of their members escape justice, and do so with impunity.

This one,' said the hooded man, 'resists sorcery, Cotillion. Though his blood is old, I wonder, will all mortals one day be like him? An end to miracles. Nothing but dull, banal existence, nothing but mundane absence of wonder.' The cane jabbed. 'A world of bureaucrats. Mealy-minded, sour-faced and miserable as a reunion of clerks. In such a world, Cotillion, not even the gods will visit. Except in pilgrimage to depression.

The frog atop the stack of coins dares not jump.

Where history means nothing. Lessons are forgotten. Memories – of humanity, of all that is humane – are lost.

Oh, measure it all out! Acceptable levels of misery and suffering!' The cane swung down, thumped hard on the ground. 'Acceptable? Who the fuck says any level is acceptable? What sort of mind thinks that?

People in great need were quick to find blame in themselves, quick to assume the burden of guilt for things they in truth had no control over and could not hope to change. It was, she had begun to understand, integral to the very nature of belief, of faith. A need that could not be answered by the self was then given over to someone or something greater than oneself, and this form of surrender was a lifting of a vast, terrible weight.

It's true,' he said, 'I have never believed in single answers, never believed in this…this divisive clash of singularity. Power may have ten thousand faces, but the look in the eyes of every one of them is the same.' He glanced over to see Scillara and Felisin staring at him. 'There's no difference,' he said, 'between speaking aloud or in one's own head – either way, no-one listens.

Death is every mortal's shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched behind one now stretches before him.

Hope dies to ten thousand small cuts.

All that he has ever asked of us, of me, and Spinnock Durav, and so many others, he has given us in return. Each and every time. This... this is his secret. Don't you understand, High Priestess? We served the one who served us.

Coltaine rattles slow across the burning land. The wind howls through the bones of his hate-ridden command. Coltaine leads a chain of dogs ever snapping at his hand. Coltaine`s fist bleeds the journey home along rivers of red-soaked sand. His train howls through his bones in spiteful reprimand. Coltaine leads a chain of dogs ever snapping at his hand.

In my dreams I come face to face with myriad reflections of myself, all unknown and passing strange. They speak unending in languages not my own and walk with companions I have never met, in places my steps have never gone. In my dreams I walk worlds where forests crowd my knees and half the sky is walled ice. Dun herds flow like mud, vast floods tusked and horned surging over the plain, and lo, they are my memories, the migrations of my soul.

The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins in love and ends with grief.

But history teaches us nothing new. And should I choose to look ahead, to what is yet to come, why, I see a future made most toxic, born on the day society sets the value of wealth above that of lives.

They are a generation that has tasted blood, and where horror fades, nostalgia seeps in. In war all is simple, and there is appeal in this. Who among us is comforted by confusion, uncertainty?

Belief creates, Arathan. So you have been taught. The god cannot exist until it is worshipped, until it is given shape, personality. It is made in the crucible of faith.

I'm not a god in the traditional fashion, I am a patron. Patrons have responsibilities. Granted, I rarely have the opportunity to exercise them.

All too often cowardice wears the habit of wounded pride.