Quotes from Steven Erikson

But those days were dead, and the future held only nights, a stretch of darkness that led down to the eternal dark.

Or, rather, you irritate everyone, Curdle. Because you're so unreliable.' 'I'm not always unreliable, Telorast.

Beware the women who demand money after playing with your penis. They understand nothing of privilege.

A Hood-damned Seguleh. High ranked, too. We'd never have got our shots off – no way. Our heads would have rolled like a pair of oversized snowballs. 'I looked away, Fid. I looked right down at the ground when she turned my way.' 'Me too.' 'And that's why we're still alive.' 'Aye.

Everything was about not-knowing, the whole future, and who could even make sense enough of the past to think they really knew everything and so, knowing everything, know everything to come?

Not me, alas. Things get tough, and I'm liable to curl up and start whimpering

Never be too easy with the knowledge you possess. Words are like coin—it pays to hoard.

We're looking for grey-skinned murderers and they're hiding in these trees. Behind them, I mean. If they were in them, it'd hurt.

All betrayal will begin, or end, with words.' 'Savage

Crypt walls. We all have them, there inside—you don't go there often, do you? It's where you keep your dead. Dead relatives, dead dreams, dead promises. Dead selves, so many of those, so many. When you loot, you only take the best things. The things you can use, the things you can sell. And when you seal it all up again, the darkness remains.

Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?

They are the sentinels of futility. Acquitors of the absurd. Reflections of ourselves, forever trapped in aimless repetition. Forever indistinct, for that is all we can manage when we look upon ourselves, upon our lives. Sensations, memories and experiences, the fetid soil in which thoughts take root. Pale flowers beneath an empty sky.

Anyone could reason themselves into a corner, and so justify surrender.

One day I'll be a soldier," Ganoes said. The man grunted. "Only if you fail at all else, son. Taking the sword is the last act of desperate men. Mark my words and find yourself a more worthy dream.

I guess so, Paran. Now, if you'll look in that pack of mine, you'll find a jug of Worrytown wine. Its vintage is about a week." The captain rose. "Meaning?" "Meaning it's running out of time.

The fleet of ships came later, under the command of three madmen – Crust, Urko and Nok – but first to step ashore was none other than Surly and you know who she'd become, don't you?

Children are dying.' Lull nodded. 'That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words. Quote me, Duiker, and your work's done.

am. Tehol possesses what Hull does not. Knowledge is not enough. It never is. It's the capacity to do something with that knowledge. To do it perfectly. Absolute timing. With devastating consequences. That's what Tehol has. Hull, Errant protect him, does not.

Nor would he recognize hope if it came to him. Too much a stranger, too long a ghost.

The man who never smiles Drags his nets through the deep And we are gathered To gape in the drowning air Beneath the buffeting sound Of his dreaded voice Speaking of salvation In the repast of justice done And fed well on the laden table Heaped with noble desires He tells us all this to hone the edge Of his eternal mercy Slicing our bellies open One by one. In the Kingdom of Meaning Well

Show me a merciful child and I will truly avow a belief in miracles.

The wounded will wound.

The Nerek believed that they were the children of a woman and a serpent, and that the serpent dwelt still within the body, that gently curved spine, the stacked knuckles reaching up to hide its head in the centre of the brain. But the mountains despised that serpent, desired only to drag it back to the ground, to return it once more to its belly, slithering in the cracks and coiled beneath rocks. And so, in the course of a life, the serpent was made to bow, to bend and twist.

I've been the walking dead all along, and I didn't even know it. The thought left him weakened, as if some hidden knife had just pushed deep inside, piercing his soul. 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?