Quotes from Steven Erikson

To draw a weapon is to announce an end to uncertainty.

Do not flee us. Do not flee this moment, this scene. Do not confuse dislike and abhorrence with angry denial of truths you do not wish to see. I accept your horror and expect no forgiveness. But if you deny, I name you coward. And I have had my fill of cowards.

niegdyÅ› wierzyÅ' nawet w to, ?e nad caÅ'ym bytem panuje wszechmocna, dobroczynna istota. A Å›wierszcze grajÄ… po to, by pomóc nam zasn??. Nie sposób odgadn??, jakie jeszcze gÅ'upoty mogÅ'y siÄ™ zakra?? do jego mÅ'odej, naiwnej gÅ'owy przed tymi wszystkimi tysiÄ…cleciami.

No, in an existence bound with true meaning and purpose, oblivion should ever arrive unexpected, unanticipated and unseen. One moment racing full tilt, the next, gone.

it is human nature to transform loss into a virtue.

Understand: we exist for the sole purpose of being witness to existence. This and this alone is our collective contribution to all that has been created. We serve to bring existence into being. Without eyes to see, nothing exists.

Oh, what a miserable man you are! If you're wrong and he tries to bite me, I will be very upset with you, Mok. I will lay waste to your loins. I will make your eyes crossed so that everyone who looks at you and your silly mask will not be able to help but laugh. And I will think of other things, too, I assure you.

If we are to live,' Rake went on, 'we must take risks. Else our lives become deaths in all but name. There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail – should we fall – we will know that we have lived.' Endest

Betrayal was the greatest of all crimes in Rallick's mind, for it took all that was human within a person and made it a thing of pain.

It was so pathetic, really, how so much violence came from someone feeling small. Small of mind, and it did not matter how big the sword in hand, that essential smallness remained, gnawing with very sharp teeth.

It's just the place we chose. To do what's right. But then, maybe that alone gives reason to take us down, to destroy us.

Look not to our unknown benefactor for salvation. This is humanity's war upon itself and the only salvation possible must be found in the eyes of our brother, our sister, our neighbor. Do find the courage, my beloved friend, to meet that gaze.

False visions of the world were a child's right, not something to be resented, but neither were they worthy of any adult sense of longing.

To mourn is to feel a flower's slow death, hill bear. To bed a man is to recall the flower's bright glory.

Aboard the Willful Child 'Well done, everyone,' said Hadrian as he stepped down from the displacement pad, 'you all survived a harrowing voyage down to Ancient Earth in the time period known to historians as the Age of Frothing Hate, where almost everyone acted like stupid little children having temper tantrums because reality refused to conform to their deluded beliefs.

Strings glared at his new corporal. 'Where'd you learn that skill?' The man shrugged. 'Don't know. Don't like getting hit.' 'Well, do you ever counter-attack?' Tarr frowned. 'Sure. When they're tired.

The most deadly seducers are the ones encouraging conformity. If you can only feel safe when everybody else feels, thinks and looks the same as you, then you're a damned coward...not to mention a vicious tyrant in the making.

After all, tyranny has no sense of humour. Too thin-skinned, too thoroughly full of its own self-importance

As far as Gu'Rull could determine, the only virtue humans possessed was a talent for starting over, with stern resolve restored in the sudden glow of renewed optimism, in complete disregard of whatever lessons past failures might offer. And he had no choice but to acknowledge the power of that virtue. It is contingent upon collective amnesia, but as everyone knows, stupidity needs no excuse to repeat itself.

Our education system no longer teaches empathy,' Sam said. 'Now, if everybody in college had to take a minor in Literature, the world would be a better place.

The bully's greatest terror,' Bugg said, 'comes when he meets someone bigger and meaner—

In that moment, success or failure would lose all relevance. The triumph was in the stance. In the defiance. Because this is the essence of life itself. Human and wild, in that moment we are all the same.

There is, all about us, ancient knowledge - that cannot be denied. Yet Kruppe wonders, are there memories? True memories? Of enlivened flesh and the wind's caress, of the laughter of children? Memories of love? When frozen between life and death, in the glacial in-between, what can exist of mortal feeling? Not even an echo. Only memories of ice, of ice and no more than that.

Power may have ten thousand faces, but the look in the eyes of every one of them is the same.