Quotes from Steven Erikson

There are no singular tales. A life in solitude is a life rushing to death. But a blind man will never rush; he but feels his way, as befits an uncertain world.

Just so. And wonder, my friend, is the intellect's most feared foe. Its path is love, and love is the language of humility. The rational mind would stand over it with a bloodstained sword, and in the empty bleakness of its eyes you will see its triumph.

Memories belong in the soil, in stone, in wind. They are the land's unseen meaning, such that touches the souls of all who would look – truly look – upon it.

Too many strive for the unachievable, and this pursuit consumes them. They rush frantic and desperate and so reveal weakness in the face of sadness. More than weakness, in fact. It is in truth a kind of cowardice, that which espouses an evasive disposition as if it were a virtue.

There is no point in honoring the dead. I have seen too much to believe otherwise. Grieve for lost potential, the end of possibilities, the eternally silence demise of promise. Grieve for that, Fear Sengar, and you will understand, finally, how grief is but a mirror, held close to one's own face.

Rake was an atmosphere, a heart-thudding, terror-threaded presence no-one could ignore, much less escape. Violence, antiquity, sombre pathos, and darkest horror – the Son of Darkness was a gelid eddy in immortality's current

I am as true as anything you have ever seen. A dying child, abandoned by the world. And I say this: there is nothing truer. Nothing. Flee from me if you can. I promise I will haunt you. This is my only purpose now, the only one left to me. I am history made alive, holding on but failing. I am everything you would not think of, belly filled and thirst slaked, there in all your comforts surrounded by faces you know and love. But hear me. Heed my warning. History has claws.

Freedom – she understood now – was something so long lost among humans that they had forgotten what it felt like. Bend to your labours! Grasp those coins! Keep the doors locked and fires raging to empty the shadows behind you! Make your brothers and sisters kneel before you, to serve your pleasures. Are you free? You don't remember the truth of what once was – of what you all so willingly surrendered.

The historian, now witness, stumbling in the illusion that he will survive. Long enough to set the details down on parchment in the frail belief that truth is a worthwhile cause. That the tale will become a lesson heeded. Frail belief? Outright lie, a delusion of the worst sort. The lesson of history is that no one learns.

I have never much liked Forkrul Assail.

An unfortunate side effect of education among the masses is lack of respect.

Civilizations in decline are notable when certain of their members escape justice, and do so with impunity.

Before Lord Anomander Rake the crowd in the street shrank back, all thoughts of festivity swept away.

The nature of conspiracy, which among those who both feared and named it, seemed to always possess at its core a misguided belief in the competence of others, as weighed against the incapacities, real or imagined, of the believer. Therefore, he concluded, the belief in conspiracy was an announcement of the believer's own sense of utter helplessness in the face of forces both mysterious and fatally efficient.

Extraordinary, how single lives just fold into the whole mess, over and over again, all caught up in the greater swirl. Spinning round and round, and ever downward, it seems. Ever downward. Fools, all of us, to think we can swim clear of that current.

The world was full of lies. And people keep telling us we need them, all in the name of peace. But the peace we got was poison.

The power he commanded insisted upon subjects. Strength was ever relative, and he could not dominate without the company of the dominated.

Odd, isn't it, how we now deliver upon another nation what we would not have done to ourselves.

Life was a war against a thousand enemies, from the sustenance carved from nature to the insanity of a people's will to do wrong in the name of right.

Names are not for the asking, mortal. Names are earned.

Bodily functions are a wonderful, indeed sensual, thing. Why, the mere blowing clear of a nose is a potential source of ecstasy, once you grasp its phlegmatic allure.

I've been telling myself this was being alive. This here. This…hiding. Wishing. Dreaming. Wanting. And all the while, what does anyone else see when they look at me?

What we desire in our hearts, Arathan, and what must be … well, that is a rare embrace, so rare you're likely to never know it. You have lived that truth. I have no promises to make you. I cannot say what awaits you, but you are now in your year and the time has come for you to make your life.

The stupid knew better than to look into their wake. The wise could not help it and so suffered greatly. This was humanity's great divide, and many a time, Damisk had envied the stupid and all the obstinate incomprehension he saw in their eyes and faces. In the end, it takes wisdom to scream.