Quotes from Steven Erikson

The world delivers its lessons in manners subtle or, if required, cruel and blunt, so that even the thickest of subjects will comprehend. Failing that, they die. For the smart ones, of course, incomprehension is inexcusable.

The sorrow in his soul had begun to taste sour. Aged and dissolute, moments from crumbling. He did not know what would come in its wake. Resignation, as might find a fatally ill man in his last days? Or just an exultant eagerness to see it all end? At the moment, even despair seemed too much effort.

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

Life belonged to other people, and his only claim to it was his power to take it from them. Nor would he recognize hope if it came to him. Too much a stranger, too long a ghost.

He sensed wry amusement in Hood. ' One day, even the gods will answer to death.

They'd needed each other, and though thereafter they rarely spoke of that night – the only one they had shared – she had once commented, in a private moment, that she'd drunk so much to find the courage to invite him to lie with her.

Who in there dreams is not omnipotent?

Listen, friend, I've known a lot of drunks in my time. You look at four, five months being sober and think it's eternity. But me, I see a man still brushing the puke from his clothes. A man who could get knocked right back down.

Quick Ben. You snake-eyed shifty know-it-all bastard from the bung-hole of Seven Cities. I never liked you. Never trusted you, even when I had to. The things you know about, why I—

There had been no time when he'd felt alone. Alone in the frightened sense, that is. Solitude was born of decision, and could be as easily yielded when its purpose was done.

Obedience had never been deemed a pure virtue among the Tiste Andii. To follow must be an act born of deliberation, of clear-eyed, cogent recognition that the one to be followed has earned the privilege. So often, after all, formal structures of hierarchy stood in place of such personal traits and judgements. A title or rank did not automatically confer upon the one wearing it any true virtue, or even worthiness to the claim. Nimander

am not the one to ask. Does the sun lift into the sky outside then collapse once more? Do bells sound to proclaim a control where none truly exists? Do mortal fools still measure the increments leading to their deaths, wagering pleasures against costs, persisting in the delusion that deeds have value, that the world and all the gods sit in judgement over every decision made or not made? Do

No purer artist exists or has ever existed than a child freed to imagine.

But compassion was engagement, a mindfulness beyond that of mere witness

We are born from darkness and to darkness we return. These are the truths you so fear, and in your fear discount.

Wind slapped them against the cliff face, then yanked them outward in a biting swirl of airborne sand.

We're all born to die, you idiot. Let the span last a single heartbeat, let it last a thousand years. Stretch the heartbeat out, crush down the centuries, it's no different. They feel the same, when the end arrives. Gods, they feel the same!

I am a sword about to leave its scabbard. I am iron, and in the day's light I shall blind you all.

otherwise." The old man made no reply to that. They walked on in the city's sepulchral silence. The foundation stones and the low ridges of inner walls mapped the floor plans of the buildings to either side.

Numbness spread, allowing him to move his arms without the stabbing agony that had had him bathed in sweat over the last few hours.

The dark bloom of sorcery was a stain few cared to examine too closely. It had a way of spreading.

You could have just told him the truth. That Mael wanted him and wanted him badly. That we had to reach in and drag him out – he would have been far more thankful with all that.' 'Gratitude is a useless luxury in this instance, Shadowthrone. No distractions, remember? Nothing and no one to turn Traveller from his fated destiny. Leave Mael for another time.

they make me think of that boy, the way he always got into things he shouldn't have. Wits enough to be curious, not smart enough to be cautious.

Humans insisted on others behaving properly, but rarely forced the same standards upon themselves. Justifications dispensed with logic, thriving on opportunism and delusions of pious propriety.