Quotes from Steven Erikson

to hide weakness behind bluster was to hide nothing at all.

His heart sank as her gaze passed over him, then her head whipped back.

You forget, I once watched you dance...

Falsehoods cease being false when enough people believe them, Bakal. Instead, they blaze like eternal truths, and woe to the fool who tries pissing a stream on that.

The critical part of herself could well have sneered at the contrivance, as if the only genuine gestures were the small ones, the ones devoid of an audience. As if true honesty belonged to solitude, since to be witnessed was to perform, and performance was inherently false since it invited expectation.

If dreams of flying are the last hope of freedom I will pray for wings with my last breath.

Sensitivity is a pervasive kind of vulnerability, after all. Makes you easy to hurt, makes the scars you carry liable to open and weep at the slightest prod.

From warrior horsemen to horsebreeders to merchants of wine, beer and cloth. An ancient nobility of the blade, now a nobility of hoarded gold, trade agreements, subtle manoeverings and hidden corruptions in gilded rooms and oil-lit corridors.

The language of Consumer is most colorful. At last count, this language possesses twenty-nine thousand four hundred fifty six words and phrases to replace and deflect the immoral concept of 'greed'. It possesses Four Volumes of Rationalizations, Nine Volumes of Justifications and a Handy Quick-Chart of Suitable False Definitions of the concept of 'need', an essential resource to be used at the Moment of Indecision in Conjunction with Mouth- Watering Pupil- Dilating Desire.

Of course there had been no such crimes. And the blood, which they had shed so profusely, had yielded no evidence of its taint, for neither the name of a people nor the hue of their skin, nor indeed the cast of their features, could make life's blood any less pure, or precious.

I think … I think I am getting tired of living. Tired of the whole thing. Nothing is working like it used to. Flaws are appearing, signs of things breaking down. Inside. The very core of my spirit.

Power has voice, and that voice is the Song

If gods could truly offer up a simple world, would not every mortal soul fall to its knees?

A thousand other deaths, ' he whispered, so low that only Baruk and Rake heard him, 'would not have satisfied me. But I'll settle for this one.

There is no struggle too vast, no odds too over- whelming, for even should we fail – should we fall – we will know that we have lived.' Anomander

Felisin Paran - she had no luck at all, and when good things showed up, rare as that was, well, she didn't know what to do or say. A person hurts enough inside, all they can do is hurt back.

She might decide on a real curse. And if she does, I need to counter it." "Hood's breath, what did you say to her?" "I made a terrible mistake. I agreed with her mother.

There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it.

Their power comes, as Monok Ochem said, from layers. Stone shaped into tools and weapons. Air shaped by throats. Minds that discovered, faint as flickering fires in the sky, the recognition of oblivion, of an end…to life, to love. Eyes that witnessed the struggle to survive, and saw with wonder its inevitable failure. To know and to understand that we must all die, Trull Sengar, is not to worship death. To know and to understand is itself magic, for it made us stand tall.

Words were numbers were codes were formulae. Words held secret maps, the measuring of paces, the patterns of mortal minds, of histories, of cities, of continents and warrens.

Ask not the hero about heroism Forgive the unwillingness To lock gazes while you search For what cannot be explained

Join us, friend," said Kruppe. "Sit here by this fire: this scene paints the history of our kind, as you well know. A night, a hearth, and a tale to spin…

Perspective,' he'd say. 'You see? The world changes according to where you stand. So choose, my children, choose and choose again, where you will make your stand …' Where

We served the one who served us.' He