Quotes from Steven Erikson

Hollow is the head of a fool. And everyone who listens only to the echoes bouncing in his skull, believing them true, is doubly a fool. Yet these echoes are all we ever hear. Beliefs feeding into beliefs, mindless as serpents devouring their own tail.

You weren't punished for not doing what you were told. (...) They hurt you because they could, because there was no-one there who was capable of stopping them.

Upon the blessing of Nimander, for his service to Mother Dark, all land holdings had been relinquished to Mother Dark, and all those Tiste born to the bloodline, and their attendant staff, warriors, mendicants and scholars, now served her, taking the name of Andii, Children of Night.

Gesler kicked one of the severed heads across the deck. Its uneven thumping was loud in the still air. 'Who still wants to live for ever?" he growled, then spat.

Being illiterate, she has scrawled her name on to a list, assuming her name can be pictographically rendered into something like a chicken heart's spasm the moment before death

back away. As Sleem said, there is no value in despair. But plenty of despair in value, once the illusion is revealed.

He knew which world he wanted to live in. But, people didn't have that choice, did they? Not unless they killed the spark inside themselves first. With drink, with the oblivion of sweet smoke, but those were false dreams and made mockery of the ones truly lost – the ones whose lives had passed.

Take any segment of population, impose strict yet clear definitions on their particular characteristics, then target them for compliance. Bribe the weak to expose the strong. Kill the strong, and the rest are yours. Move on to the next segment

It is invariably those lacking in intellect,' Gothos expounded, 'who unceasingly rue their misfortune. The curse of the witless is to beat one's head against the obstinate wall of how things really are, rather than what

A civilization can as easily drown in what it knows as in what it doesn't know.

Crokus jumped at a faint plopping sound from the stairwell. He laid his hands on his knives, tensing.

A truly successful leader is a reluctant leader. Not one whose every word is greeted with frenzied cheering either—after all, what happens to the mind of such a leader, after such scenes are repeated again and again? A growing certainty, a belief in one's own infallibility, and onward goes the march into disaster.

When suffering awaits, it takes great courage to stride forward, to enter this unrelenting, unforgiving realm.

We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms.

The day he had been Shorn by his brother, it had seemed to him that his heart had died. Chained to stone, awaiting the cold water and the rot that it promised, the muscle that forged the tides of his blood seemed to beat on in some kind of waning inertia.

What's wrong with you?' 'Happy…ha, that's good. Very good.' He then turned to study her. 'You're eager for Skulldeath to take one of those flying leaps straight between your legs? You want to get pregnant with some prince from some Seven Cities flying squirrel tribe?

But ownership bereft of propriety was a lie.

The things said and the things not said. In the space in between, a thousand worlds.

The Queen's Consort?' 'Yes. I once robbed him.' 'Indeed! And what did you take?' 'His virginity.

Look, Tammy, it's part of our mandate. We barrel in, we fuck things up, and then we walk away feeling good about our selves.

He wiped sweat from his brow, drew a shaky breath.

Does it ever strike you, Finadd, that peace leads to an indulgence in strife?' 'No, since your statement is nonsensical. The opposite of peace is war, while war is an extreme expression of strife. By your argument, life is characterized as an oscillation between strife during peace and strife during war.' 'Not entirely nonsensical, then,' Turudal Brizad said.

Ask Dujek about the reports coming down from the North Campaign. Elder magic—Kurald Galain. The Lord of Moon's Spawn is the Master Archmage—you know his name as well as I do.

Evil possessed myriad faces, and some of them were open and genuine. Whilst others, like Bauchelain's, revealed nothing, nothing at all. Imid could not decide which of the two was more frightening.