Quotes from Steven Erikson

To rule is to kneel before expediency.

How much could be stripped from a people before they began stripping away themselves? The steep slope of dissolution began with a skid, only to become a headlong run.

Hopes had a way of sinking fast once you stepped out of childhood.

All life is sorcery. In its very essence, the soul is magical, and each process of chemistry, of obeisance and cooperation, of surrender and of struggle—at every scale conceivable—is a consort of sorcery.

I do not want certainty. In fact, certainty is the one thing I fear the most.

even if it meant pulling Oponn kicking and screaming on to this plain to face whatever lay ahead.

Why are dumb brutes so damned smart, anyway?' 'Why are us smart folk so often stupidly brutal, Quick Ben?' Trull asked. 'Stop trying to confuse me in my state of animal terror, Edur.

Dying left no details behind, after all. And most certainly, nothing like absolution awaited the fallen. Absolution comes from the living, not the dead, and, as Hedge well knew, it has to be earned

And who is this?' Bugg asked. A shifting of vast stones—now this…this shoving aside of entire mountains. What begins here?

There must be the hope … the hope for balance. In my soul.

Being alive, Tattersail concluded as she approached her tent, isn't the same as feeling good about it.

Now that's a laugh, isn't it? The most deadly seducers are the ones encouraging conformity. If you can only feel safe when everybody else feels, thinks and looks the same as you, then you're a Hood-damned coward…not to mention a vicious tyrant in the making.

To see a dead body was to recoil, mind spinning a dust-devil of thoughts - that is not me - see the difference between us? That is not me, that is not me. No one I know, no one I have ever known. That is not me . . . but . . . it could be. So easily it could be.

the entire notion of cause and effect, suddenly revealing its true level of complexity, simply overwhelmed.

Oh, we take you into slaughter without a moment's thought. And yes, some of you come to enjoy it, to lust for that cacophony, that violence, the reek of blood. And so we share with you, dear horse, our peculiar madness. But who judges us for this crime against you and your kind? No one. Unless your horses have a god.

If it is true and the Grey Helms seek to be the swords of nature's vengeance, then the Shield Anvil has missed the point. Since when is nature interested in revenge? Look around." He waved a hand. "The grass grows back where it can. The birds nest where they can. The soil breathes when it can. It just goes on, Highness, the only way it knows how to – with what's left.

Innocence,' she whispered. The one thing we all leave behind, alas. The one thing we all walk away from, sooner or later. Oh yes, you can look back and call it ignorance instead. But you do that because you've forgotten what you lost.

With sufficient distance, even a range of mountains could look flat, the valleys between each peak unseen. In the same manner, lives and deaths, mortality's peaks and valleys, could be levelled.

Giving advice to a child is like flinging sand at an obsidian wall. Nothing sticks. The brutal truth is that we each suffer our own lessons – they can't be danced round. They can't be slipped past. You cannot gift a child with your scars – they arrive like webs, constricting, suffocating, and that child will struggle and strain until they break. No matter how noble your intent, the only scars that teach them anything are the ones they earn themselves.

Corruption and incompetence. These were rebellion's sparks.

Children are dying." Lull nodded. "That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.

Kallor shrugged. '[...] I have walked this land when the T'lan Imass were but children. I have commanded armies a hundred thousand strong. I have spread the fire of my wrath across entire continents, and sat alone upon tall thrones. Do you grasp the meaning of this?' 'Yes,' [said Caladan Brood.] 'You never learn.

Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?' The Imass shrugged before replying. 'I think of futility, Adjunct.' 'Do all Imass think about futility?' 'No. Few think at all.' 'Why is that?' The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. 'Because Adjunct, it is futile.

The lesson of history is that no one learns.