Quotes from Steven Erikson

When we speak of ancient times, Rud Elalle, we find in our words things far nearer to hand, and all those emotions we imagined new, blazing with our own youth, we find to be ancient beyond imagining. -- Silchas Ruin

War is not a natural state. It is an imposition, and a damned unhealthy one. With its rules, we willingly yield our humanity. Speak not of just causes, worthy goals. We are takers of life.

La vague de Tenescowris, masse humaine devenue folle de faim, se fracassa inexorablement contre les murailles de la ville, puis les submergea. Les barricades élevées à l'emplacement des portes, ployant sous la pression, finirent par céder.

The worlds live on, beyond us, countless unravelling tales.

This is where our bones will rest, humps and ripples in the sand. Then, one day, even those signs will be gone. We've reached the shore, where Hood awaits and no one else. A journey of the spirit as much as of the flesh. I welcome the end to both.

A crowded soul, captain, is a place of shadows and gloom. Scour it clean, and nothing will remain to block the light.

The gentler and kinder the god, the more harsh and cruel its worshippers, for they hold to their conviction with taut certainty, febrile in its extremity, and so cannot abide dissenters. They will kill, they will torture, in that god's name.

You took us, you made us into something, but none of us knows what, or even what for.

I have explained to him that most of what we call courting boils down to just being there. Every time you turn, you see him, until his company feels perfectly natural to you. "Courting is the art of growing like mould on the one you want." -Draconus

Anyone who has mastered a weapon – truly mastered it – is a humble man or woman.

I am Hood's Herald - do you dare challenge a servant of the Lord of death?' The T'lan Imass's desiccated lips peeled back. 'Why would we hesitate, Jaghut? Now ask of your lord, does he dare challenge us?

The Letherii well knew that resistance to tyranny was nurtured in schools of faith, espoused by old, bitter priests and priestesses, by elders whole would work through the foolish young – use them like weapons, flung away when broken, melodramatically mourned when destroyed. Priests and priestesses whose version of faith justified the abuse of their own followers.

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. They'll tear you to pieces.

Found the rum, did you?' Lutes said from behind her, 'She's poisoning her liver.' 'My liver's fine, soldier. Just needs a squeezing out.' 'Squeezing out?' She turned round and glared at the squad healer. 'I seen livers before, Cutter. Big sponges full of blood. Tumbles out when you cut someone open.' 'Sounds more like a lung, Sergeant. The liver's this flat thing, muddy brown or purple—

People either had strength or they didn't. The weak ones left her disgusted, welling with dark contempt. If they chose at all it was ever the wrong choice. They let the world break them time and again, then wondered – dull-eyed as this ox – why it was so cruel. But it wasn't the world that was the problem, was it? It was stepping into the stampede's path over and over again.

Pou?ení z historie je to, že se z ní nikdy nikdo nepou?í.

You'll do right, soldier, because you don't know how to do anything else. Doing right, soldier, is the only thing you're good at.' And if it hurts? 'Too bad. Stop your bitching, Fid. Besides, you ain't as alone as you think you are.

improbabilities is a word few children know, and even if they did, why, they would dismiss the notion with a single hand fluttering overhead as they danced to the horizon. Because it will not do to creep timorously into the future, no, one should leap, sail singing through the air, and who can say where one's feet will finally set down on this solid, unknown land?

The historian rode out into the battlefield, almost desperate to rejoin the army. It was not a time to be alone, in the heart of slaughter, where every piece of wreckage or burned and torn flesh seemed to cry out silent outrage. Sites of battle held on to a madness, as if the blood that had soaked into the soil remembered pain and terror and held locked within it the echoes of screams and death cries.

Sweat and death clung to the air thick as gauze.

I sometimes think we only invented war when we ran out of animals to kill.

good men, the ones you lost.

Rush to death. The longer one lives, the less valued is that life. What is that?

IT'S NO SIMPLE thing,' he said, frowning as he worked through his thoughts, 'but in the world – among people, that is. Society, culture, nation – in the world, then, there are attackers and there are defenders. Most of us possess within ourselves elements of both, but in a general sense a person falls to one camp or the other, as befits their nature.