Quotes from Steven Erikson

I have lived centuries, yet what do I know of my own past? Where are my memories? How can I judge my own life without such knowledge?' 'Some would consider your curse a gift,' Mappo said, a flicker of sadness passing across his features.

Worm says fuck you, Assail!

That is one curse we all share -- the will to live.

For all the wrong reasons. But there's this – in this Hood-damned world, it's worth taking what you can get. Whatever you can get.

To know too much is to lose the wonder of mystery. In answering every question we forget the value of not knowing.' 'There

He faced Karsa again. 'You will stay this night at the Inn of the Wood?' 'I shall, although it is not made of wood, and so it should be called Inn of the Brick.

Is not the mind a wondrous world? That thoughts and aspirations can cavort with such glee? That desires can spool out into such wild mess as to tangle every sense, and confound the spirit in a welter of delicious indulgence! Reality stands no chance against such inner creations.

There's no point in thinking about tomorrow. Just the next hour, each hour. Stay alive, Felisin, and live well if you can.

To live a hard life was to make solid and impregnable every way in, until no openings remained and the soul hid in darkness, and no one else could hear its screams, its railing at injustice, its long, agonizing stretches of sadness. Hardness without created hardness within.

But words were indeed ephemeral, able to sleet past all manner of defences, quick to cut, eager to draw blood.

When selfishness becomes a pathology, there will be many innocent victims.

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.

SPACE... it's fucking big. These are the voyages of the starship, A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life life-forms, to boldly blow the...

But blood is the chain that can never break. And, though we leave the house of our birth, it never leaves us. [...] Blood. Of course. This is how you break an unbreakable chain. By dying.

Exactly. Peace of mind." "Fatal delusion, you mean.

To fit into a new thing you had to leave the old thing behind, and that wasn't as easy as it sounded, since it meant accepting that the old thing was dead, for ever gone, no matter where you tried standing or how stubbornly you held fast.

Paradise belonged to the innocent. Which was why it was and would ever remain … empty. And that is what makes it a paradise.

It wouldn't be happiness then, happiness wasn't kind anyway, the way it could vanish in an instant. He might not miss it at all.

and is she sorry? By Apsalar she is not!

He understands that there are wounds in the soul that must not be touched; but there are others that warm to the caress.

My Queen, neither mortal nor immortal can fathom the mind of an artist. But as a general rule, between two possible answers, choose the more sordid one.' 'Of course. How silly of me.

Hatred is a most pernicious weed, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself.' 'With words.' 'Indeed, with words. Form an opinion, say it often enough and pretty soon everyone's saying it right back at you, and then it becomes a conviction, fed by unreasoning anger and defended with weapons of fear. At which point, words become useless and you're left with a fight to the death.

There's nothing usual about killing and dying, about pain and terror.

It's just how it played out. Choices are made, accidents happen, the fates fall. Remember that, when our own falls on us.