Quotes from Steven Erikson

People don't change to suit their god; they change their god to suit them.

We are rocked in the tumult, and the awareness of one's own ignorance is a smothering cloak that proves poor armour.

Hadrian cleared his throat and said, "Listen, HUB - oh and do thank Tammy for teaching you Terranglais. Hub, I have, uh, a question for you." "Proceed, Disappointingly Predictable and Wholly Enervating on the Spiritual-IQ Sentience-Complex Nodal Biological

Failure wears many guises, and I have worn them all.

What gesture will you make, to announce to all the true colour of your soul? How long will we all wait for you to find your courage?

The easiest thing to break is a man's heart ...

Tearing the sword loose burst the ribcage, and Samar stared to see the victim's heart, still beating, pitch free of its broken nest, dangling for a moment from torn arteries and veins, before the warrior fell from sight.

We do naught but scratch the world, frail and fraught. Every vast drama of civilizations, of peoples with their certainties and gestures, means nothing, affects nothing. Life crawls on, ever on. She wondered if the gift of revelation—of discovering the meaning underlying humanity—offered nothing more than a devastating sense of futility.

Hellian's eyes fixed on the T'lan Imass. 'Fiddler,' she said, 'you look awful.

Bairoth Gild's voice filled his head. 'Karsa Orlong, you circle the truths as a lone wolf circles a bull elk.

But I am tired of sympathy. Of feeling it, at least. I'd welcome receiving it, if only to salve all this self-pity.

Karsa spoke in a low voice, 'Tovald Nom, listen well. A warrior who followed me, Delum Thord, was struck on the head. His skull cracked and leaked thought-blood. His mind could not walk back up the path. He was left helpless, harmless. I, too, have been struck on the head. My skull is cracked and I have leaked thought-blood ???????????' Actually it was drool.

Is civilization

Well, we're fascistic and overmilitarized and being governed by reactionary undereducated proud-to-be-ignorant meatheads for one thing

A CORKSCREW PLUME of dust raced across the basin, heading deeper into the trackless desert of the Pan'potsun Odhan.

if his efforts are mediocre, we're likely to let him live. If he shows us brilliance, we'll kill him.

Madmen built houses of solid stone. Then circled looking for a way inside. Inside, where cosy perfection waited. People and schemes and outright lies barred his every effort, and that was the heart of the conspiracy. From outside, after all, the house looked real. Therefore it was real. Just a little more clawing at the stone door, a little more battering, one more pounding collision will burst that barrier. And on and on and round and round. The worn ruts of madness.

If she was a friend, you will miss her company, and that is the true source of your grief—your sorrow is for yourself.

world beat upon a soul until bones bent and hearts broke.

kind. It increases in complexity the more of us there are. Laws keep us muzzled and punishment delivers the necessary message when those

Pain was not a pleasant thing to live with, not day after day, night upon night, not with every damned breath.

The historian sighed, glancing up at the mage. "Can you not repair it? What was your warren again, Kulp?" "Boat repair," the man answered.

Imperfect. We can never match the ideals set before us. That is the burden of mortality.

But, she wondered now, where was the crime in that most human of capacities: to carry in one's heart a contradiction, to leave it unchallenged, immune to reconciliation; indeed, to be two people at once, each true to herself, and neither denying the presence of the other? What vast laws of cosmology were broken by this human talent? Did the universe split asunder? Did reality lose its way?