Quotes from Steven Erikson

A state that employs torture invites barbarism and deserves nothing better than to suffer the harvest of its own excesses.

Among humans, cold indifference was often manifested in acts of brutal cruelty, was often the true visage of evil

Wisdom grows by stripping away beliefs, until the last tether is cut, and suddenly you float free. Only, because your eyes are wide open, you see right away that you can't float in what you're in. You can only sink. That's why the meanest religions work so hard at keeping their followers ignorant. Knowledge is poison. Wisdom is depthless. Staying ignorant keeps you in the shallows.

Fiddler straightened, eyes on the stars glittering overhead. Desert stars, sharp diamonds that ever seemed eager to draw blood.

Arrogance. A vice of being undead, Toc the Younger.

If not for a dumb beast's incomprehension at its own destruction beneath the loving hands of two heartbroken children.

But, as Onos Toolan might say, the real meaning of 'tradition' was … what had he called it? 'Stupidity on purpose', that's what he said. I think. I never much listened.

Instead, we fell inside ourselves, ever deeper, that endless eating and spitting out and eating all we spat out – this is the seductive sustenance of hatred and spite, of rage and vengeance.

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.

Unwitnessed. There was crime in that notion. A profound injustice against which he railed. In silence. Like every other soldier in the Bonehunters. Maybe. No, I am not mistaken – I see something in their eyes. I can see it. We rail against injustice, yes. That what we do will be seen by no-one. Our fate unmeasured.

An unwillingness. I can carry no one else's burden - not even for a moment. We are all pulled inside ourselves now, each alone...

But I understand, now, that the cold and darkness were within me, death's own touch upon my soul.

Has it not occurred to you that clinical examination of oneself is yet another obsession? What you dissect has to be dead first – that's the principle of dissection, after all.

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. Touches, in faintest whisper, old, almost shapeless echoes – to which a mortal life adds its own.

We will ourselves empty to numb us to our cruelty. We stiffen our faces and say we have needs. But to be empty is to have no purchase, nothing to grasp on to, and so in the emptiness we slide and we slide.

People of civilized countenance made much of exposing the soft underbellies of their psyche—effete and sensitive were the brands of finer breeding. It was easy for them, safe, and that was the whole point, after all: a statement of coddled opulence that burned the throats of the poor more than any ostentatious show of wealth.

The Claw smiled. "You have begun to learn, Paran. Never be too easy with the knowledge you possess. Words are like coin—it pays to hoard.

Introspection was an act of supreme courage, one that few could manage. But when all one had left to stir was a heap of crumbled bones, there was nothing else one could do. Fleeing the scene only prolonged the ordeal. Memories clung to the horrors in his wake, and the only true escape was a plunge into madness – and madness was not a thing he could simply choose for himself. More's the pity. No, the sharper the inner landscape, the fiercer the sanity.

A soul made weary longed for sordid ends. But a soul at its end longed for all that was past, and so remained trapped in a present filled with regrets.

Should you ever outrun the guilt within your past, Sorceress, you will have outrun your soul. When it finds you again, it will kill you.

I wonder,' Trull said as he watched the momentary stand-off, 'if this is how domestication first began. Not banding together in a hunt for prey, but in an elimination of rival predators.

Some wounds never heal, and that man has just taken such a wounding.

An assassin should never see the face behind the victim's mask.

Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly.