Steven Erikson Quotes

If need be, the round man can prove a most blunt barrier.
Just ask the man with the hammer.

It was no crime to turn from the common path, yet it came at a cost nonetheless.

He wiped sweat from his brow, drew a shaky breath.

Rallick followed this by driving his other knife into Orr's chest.

The world was full of lies. And people keep telling us we need them, all in the name of peace. But the peace we got was poison.

You cannot be remade unless you are first broken.

Rage and unbearable pain meshed together like twin strands in an ever-tightening rope.

High house shadow, and a knife in the dark. A new game's begun, or the old one's just turned.

When faiths take knife in hand, surely every god must turn away.

Tradition was the last bastion of fools.

There was, in his mind, no truer measure of stupidity than to imagine that the world could be reduced to two sides,

She felt his eyes exploring her like ghost hands.

Rigga, Riggalai the Seer, the wax-witch who trapped souls in candles and burned them. Souls devoured in flame -

No tyrant could thrive where every subject said no. The tyrant thrives when the first fucking fool salutes.

And what,' he asked the dragons, 'so spurred their zeal?'
'Vengeance, of course. And Anomandaris.

Eventually every man reaches a point where every memory is unwelcome

The Soletaken was sundering the barrier, its hungry roar deafening in its reverberations.

Now, invite me in, before I lose my temperature.'

'Temper, you mean.'

'No, temperature. It's getting chilly.

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

Don't worry. I am like most people. I can keep my eyes and still see nothing.

Precision is a precise art. Poignancy is pre-eminent and precludes prevarication.

Such is the vastness of his genius that he can outwit even himself.

Names are not for the asking, mortal. Names are earned.

Tattersail smiled. The only death I fear is dying ignorant.

Already her lungs screamed for air.

And over it all, the butterflies swarmed, like a million yellow-pettalled flowers dancing on swirling winds.

Leaves skirled past, clattering like tiny bones.

Paran flicked his gaze to his weapon, glared back up and around at the warriors, then his eyes returned to Chance. And stayed there.

The wine is gone. Only sour wine fumes remain. Drunkenness pretends to resolution.

When it is all one can do to simply hold on, then to suffer is to weather a deluge no god can ease

Serious people never stopped waging their war on joy and pleasure, and they were both relentless and tireless.

Black, scorched scars crossed the battlefield as if a god's claws had swept down to join the slaughter.

The creature spun, tumbling, then twisted round to face its attacker, rage blazing in its skull.

I'm sure they were good men, the ones you lost." "Good at dying," he said.

The midday heat sapped her strength, and the sluggishness reached through to her thoughts

Ublala Pung grunted a laugh. 'They'd never find her if it was a manhunt.

Peregrination has been anything but peaceful.

Look, Tammy, it's part of our mandate. We barrel in, we fuck things up, and then we walk away feeling good about our selves.

Kruppe nodded. Kruppe is no fool, K'rul. He openly opposes no one, and he finds power a thing to be avoided at all costs.

When robbed, the rich cry out for protection and prosecution. When stealing, they expect the judiciary to look the other way.

A civilization was the means by which too many people could live together despite their mutual hatred.

A small whimper escaped her throat, then she desperately pulled her eyes away.

Why, without a sense of humour, you are blind to so much in the world. To human nature. To the absurdity of so much that we say and do.

The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres- they are worlds, realms, each one different yet the same.

Logic is simply the language of convenient rationalization in a pseudo-science-loving civilization.

It is one thing to lead by example with half a dozen soldiers at your back. It is wholly another with ten thousand.

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

Corporal Clasp crawled up beside him. 'That's one of those Fuckeral's, isn't it?

Where flies Korabas, there shall be T'iam.

At night ghosts come In rivers of grief, To claw away the sand Beneath a man's feet

The simple ones aren't simple. The broken ones aren't broken. They are rearranged.

The Lady takes most mortals unto her bosom by maladies of the colon."
"Death by constipation?

Then we're dead all that much sooner. So it goes.

There's no certainty in this, Baruk. That seems a fact particularly galling to you humans.

Diversity is worth celebrating, Humbrall Taur, for it is the birthplace of wisdom.

The frog atop the stack of coins dares not jump.

Some gifts are evil. Others are not, but what they are remains to be discovered. Rest

Look at these bones we step over. We go as far as we can go, and then we stop. And that is how it is. That is all it is. So ... now what?

Everything worth fighting for is gained without fighting.

The only consistent narrative we possess is one that we share with every other life-form: we are born, we live, and then we die.

-I'm not a god in the traditional fashion, I am a patron. Patrons have responsibilities. Granted, I rarely have the opportunity to exercise them.

Such states existed only in comparison

What's with you all, anyway? You jam a stick up your own arse then preen at how tall and straight your standing.

Civilizations in decline are notable when certain of their members escape justice, and do so with impunity.

There would always be, he now understood, those for whom violence was righteous. Sudden

There were many kinds of freedom, and the most precious ones were secret.

Hard lives begat hard laws, not just in the necessities of living, but also in those of believing.

Hunched, his face pulsing with pain, Mebra watched with hooded eyes as his words sank roots into the Red Blade commander's mind.

Your name's now Limp. Aye, not very imaginative, but it's like this. If you can't hear Hood laughing, well, I can.

How many times, dear traveller, will you walk the same path?

Numbness spread, allowing him to move his arms without the stabbing agony that had had him bathed in sweat over the last few hours.

A book of prophesy opens the doors.
You need a second book to close it.
Tanno Spiritwalker Kimloc

First in , Last out.


Motto of the bridgeburners

Against ignorance there is no front line. Against viciousness no border can hold. It breeds as readily behind your back as elsewhere.' 'What

Lost ages are neither more nor less profound than the one we live in right now.

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

The lesson of history is that no one learns.

The hot west wind that blew like sand whispering across stone.

Accord dissolves but blame is impossible to assign, leading to malaise, confusion and a vacuous resentment.

Rely not upon conscience,' Feren said, hearing the bitterness in her own voice and not caring. 'It ever kneels to necessity.

Eddies of dry wind whipped tatters of cloth and reed paper about in dancing circles.

The assassin stepped in then, his left hand moving in a high swing that buried its blade in the councilman's neck.

Courting is the art of growing like mould on the one you want.

Secrets have power so long as they remain secrets

This, then, is friendship. A family you choose. What you give to it, you give freely. What you withhold from it, measures its depth.

Light exploded behind Felisin's eyes as she sprawled sideways.

The harder the world, the fiercer the honour.

We are, all of us, nothing but impostors to our cause, because the cause we espouse is nothing more than the blind we raise to hide our own ambitions.

Rhizan gathered in writhing clumps at his hands and feet,

No-one chooses me. I do not give anyone that right. I am Karsa Orlong of the Teblor. All choices belong to me.

Too old to dream of perfection, perhaps, she had instead discovered a certain delicious appeal in flaws.

There is only one thing worse than arguing with a drunk,' Faradan Sort said, 'and that's arguing with a drunk who's right.

The girl spoke, a tone of command that rang like iron on stone.

When one does not know what one seeks, caution is the surest armour.

The ground is bare and hard / and will hold all secrets / and the sky cares not / for the games of those beneath it.

The courage of husbands is directly proportionate to the proximity of the wife.

Whatever evil you let ride becomes commonplace, eventually. Problem is, it's easier to get used to it than carve it out.

Power may have ten thousand faces, but the look in the eyes of every one of them is the same.

A man possessing power must act decisively, Ganoes Paran, else it would trickle away through his fingers.

Nor would he recognize hope if it came to him. Too much a stranger, too long a ghost.