Steven Erikson Quotes

He rubbed at his face, as if seeking to awaken the right words from muscle, blood and bone.

He had been born into debt, as had his father and his father before him. Indenture and slavery were ...

He waited a moment, as they walked side by side through the camp, and then asked, 'Sir, if there's s...

Save your explanations, I got some questions for you first and you'd better answer them!' [slurred H...

What is there left to understand? Choice is an illusion. Freedom is conceit. The hands that reach ou...

Awful things, children. Needy, self-centered tyrants, the boys all teeth and firsts, the girls all c...

The trust I have...for some people...comes down to how well I know them, and then it's a matter of m...

For we are all bound in stories, and as the years pile up they turn to stone, layer upon layer, buil...

But Hood was not yet done with her. He swung her up again, spun and once more hammered her onto the ...

There is plenty of dignity in just holding on

If all we seek is an escape, what does that say about the world we live in. We are desperate with ou...

You had the physical bullies and the emotional bullies and they both revelled in destroying lives.No...

Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one's wake, with all sorts of strange things s...

Gather close, and let us speak of nasty little shits. Oh, come now, we are no strangers to the vicio...

Now, invite me in, before I lose my temperature.’‘Temper, you mean.’‘No, temperature. It’s getting c...

The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.

Eventually every man reaches a point where every memory is unwelcome

What makes a Malazan soldier so dangerous? They’re allowed to think.

The prince is blind to subtlety. He knows his own ignorance and stupidity so is ever suspicious of o...

Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every...

Now get going. You'll find a way of calm through.""And you, Mael?""I'll drop in later. I've things f...

Dour music has its own beauty, for the song of ruin is most fertile.

The closest I ever got to Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms was when I bought the box game set for th...

Laws decide wich forms of oppression are allowed, Lord. And because of that, those laws are servants...

The future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises.

All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. ...

I have seen the face of sorrowShe looks away in the distanceAcross all these bridgesFrom whence I ca...

With the Black Company series Glen Cook single-handedly changed the face of fantasy—something a lot ...

The Wickans know that the gift of power is never free. They know enough not to envy the chosen among...

Oh, measure it all out! Acceptable levels of misery and suffering!' The cane swung down, thumped har...

Captain! You can't hold them off! I tried! I swear! They've been artificially enhanced, sir! But all...

Children understood at a very young age that doing nothing was an expression of power. Doing nothing...

It's our nature, isn't it? Again and again, we cling to the foolish belief taht simple solutions exi...

The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age a...

...so you have found me and would know the tale. When a poet speaks of truth to another poet, waht h...

There's little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they...

None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marbl...

Desire for goodness, Mister Reese, leads to earnestness. Earnestness in turn leads to sanctimonious ...

For Hood's sake,' the foreigner muttered. 'What's wrong with words?' 'With words,' said Redmask, tur...

Words were numbers were codes were formulae. Words held secret maps, the measuring of paces, the pat...

If not for a dumb beast's incomprehension at its own destruction beneaththe loving hands of two hear...

A civilization can easily drown in what it knows as in what doesn't know. Consider,' he continued, G...

Silence!” Korbolo snapped. He eyed Duiker. “You are the historian who rode with Coltaine.”The histor...

People of civilized countenance made much of exposing the soft underbellies of their psyche - effete...

We go to partake of death. And it is in these moments, before the blades are unsheated, before blood...

She watched with morbid fascination as they gathered at the stumps at the ends of the man's wrists, ...

the siren song/called silence

..."Were hostages ever killed?"She shook her head. "Not until the end. When everything...fell apart....

Everyone died in solitude, after all. A simple enough truth. A truth no one need fear. The spirits w...

The nature of conspiracy, which among those who both feared and named it, seemed to always possess a...

From faith,’ replied Emral Lanear, ‘do we not seek guidance?’ ‘Guidance, or the organized assembly a...

Purest light will blind as surely as absolute darkness.

He fashioned an empire of sorts, bereft of cities yet plagued with the endless dramas of society, it...

«Such is the irony of life,» Kruppe proclaimed, raising one pastry-filled hand over his head, «that ...

Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat.

There are times, Kruppe murmurs, when celibacy born of sad deprivation becomes a boon, nay, a source...

I am Crone, eldest of the Moon's Great Ravens, whose eyes have looked upon a hundred thousand years ...

The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres- they are worlds, realms, e...

Karsa's expression soured. 'When I began this journey, I was young. I believed in one thing. Ibeliev...

Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so o...

One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they ...

We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of i...

All right, shadow-priest, you've been spying — on what? What state secrets have you learned watching...

Gods, I wish the world was full of passive women.He thought for a moment longer, then scowled. On se...

In my dreams I come face to face with myriad reflections of myself, all unknown and passing strange....

I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good...

Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour t...

Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us.