Quotes from Steven Erikson

And so, the simple truth... the tracks we have walked in for so long become our lives, in themselves a prison

The beauty of prophecies is that they are so conveniently open to countless reinterpretations, as the demand presents itself.

This is a fell thing." "Oh, what's that?" "A gathering of women." "We ain't gonna gossip, are we?" "Among the Rhivi, it's the men who do all the gossiping. The women are too busy giving them things to gossip about.

She's not listening to us!" "We've been talking too much, that's the problem." "You're right. We should say something important, so she starts listening to us again.

Piensa en cosas bonitas. La carne se marchita.

Burdens were born from the loss of innocence. Naïveté. While the innocent yearned to lose their innocence, those who had already done so in turn envied the innocent, and knew grief in what they had lost. Between the two, no exchange of truths was possible.

War is not a natural state. It is an imposition, and a damned unhealthy one.

Mesh'arn tho'ledann: the Day of Pure Blood.

Karos Invictad took pleasure in cruelty, making him both pathetic and dangerous. If he were permitted to continue, there was the very real risk that the Letherii people would rise up in true rebellion, and the gutters in every city of the empire would run crimson.

This path`s a dire thing, the gate it leads to is like a corpse over which ten thousand nightmares bicker their fruitless claims.

We fight our wars and leave in our wake the redolent reek of suffering and misery. These plains are vast, are they not? What terrible cost would we face if we just left each other alone? An end to this squabble over land - Father Shadow knows, no-one really owns it. The game of possession belongs to us, not to the rocks and earth, the grasses and the creatures walking the surface in their fraught struggle to survive.

Youth was headlong, even when it felt static, stagnant and stifling. It liked its emotions extreme, doused in fiery spices, enough to burn the throat and set flame to the heart. The future was not consciously rushed into – it was just the place you suddenly ended up in, battered and weary and wondering how in Hood's name you got there.

Can there be magic in mere words?" "Magic powerful enough to drive gods to their knees, soldier.

Walk with me on Thieves' Road hear its song underfoot how clear its tone in misstep as it sings you in two

Stress lay in the cast of the mind, as far as Brys was concerned. Born of perspective and the hue through which one saw the world, and such things were shaped by both nature and nurture.

I think I am dead. Am I? Am I dead?" "I don't know. But... I think so." "The dead, it is said, do not sleep." Coll knew the saying, and knew that it had originally come from Hood's own temple. He knew, as well, the wry observation that closed the quote. "'While the living do not live'. Not that that makes much sense." "It does to me. For I now know that I have lost what I did not know I once possessed.

They resumed their journey. Tracking the aimless with purpose. Just like growing up.

To be a living artist is to be driven again and again to explain oneself, to justify every creative decision, yet to bite down hard on the bit is the only honourable recourse, to my mind at least. Explain nothing, justify even less. Grin at the gallows, dear friends!

Marionettes dance afield beneath masterly hands – I stumble among them crossed by the strings in tangled two-step and curse all these fools in their mad pirouette –

Mockery is just hate's patina, and every laugh is vicious.

Exulting in the moment, witch, does not require wild dancing.

Grub, his adopted son Admiral Nok Commander Alardis Nil, a Wickan warlock Nether, a Wickan witch Temul, a Wickan of the Crow Clan (survivor of the Chain of Dogs) Squint, a soldier in the Aren Guard Pearl, a Claw Lostara Yil, an officer in the Red Blades Gall, Warleader of the Khundryl Burned Tears Imrahl, a warrior of the Khundryl Burned Tears Topper, the Clawmaster MARINES OF THE 9th COMPANY, 8th LEGION

For himself, Rallick, such gifts had long since been lost, and he was not the kind of man to stir the ashes. No embers survived, no flame could be born anew. Life belonged to other people, and his only claim to it was his power to take it from them. Nor would he recognise hope if it came to him. Too much a stranger, too long a ghost.

Ain't nothing so tensifying as running for your life at a snail's pace