"No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style."
— Steven Brust

"Everybody generalizes from one example. At least, I do."
— Steven Brust

"The tools are real. The viewer is real, you, the artist, is real and a part of everything you paint. You connect yourself to the viewer by sharing something that is inside of you that connects with something inside of him. All you have as your guide is that you know what moves you. All you have to do it with is a brush, some chemical and canvas, and technique."
— Steven Brust

"Staring into the dragon's maw, one quickly learns wisdom."
— Steven Brust

"The struggle is always worthwhile, if the end be worthwhile and the means honorable; foreknowledge of defeat is not sufficient reason to withdraw from the contest."
— Steven Brust

"I will do you one last favour, in the name and memory of the figment you have replaced. I will clarify a misapprehension of yours. Circumstances did not conspire against me. I was not led into anything, nor did I fall. I chose my life and my course. I chose to do wrong in the hope that right might come of it. I regret it. I would choose differently now. But the choice was mine. Deny that, falsify it, tinsel it over with pious, pitying justification, and you deny everything I am and every scrap of what little good I have been able to do in my life. Good or bad, give me credit for what I have done. I would rather go honestly to Hell, admitting that I leaped knowingly into error and folly, than enter into the sweetest Heaven men can dream of by whining that I had been pushed."
— Steven Brust (Freedom and Necessity)

"True heroics must be carefully planned - and strenuously avoided."
— Steven Brust

"Plan. Yes. Good idea. I should come up with a plan."
— Steven Brust (Dzur)

"It is always man's ideas which drive his actions. This has, at times, resulted in great evil; but as we look around us, we cannot doubt that it has resulted in greater good."
— Steven Brust (Sethra Lavode)

"All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what’s cool."
— Steven Brust (The Paths of the Dead)

"In our memories, there is a graveyard where we bury our dead. They all lie there together, the loved ones and the ones we hated, friends and foes and kin, with no distinction among them. We have to mourn every one of them, because our memories have made them as much a part of us as our bones or our skin. If we don't, we've no right to remember anything at all."
— Steven Brust

"One man's mistake is another man's opportunity."
— Steven Brust

"I’ve heard it said: ‘By his home you shall know him’; and we all know that we must pay attention to anyone who reverses the subject and auxiliary verb in his sentence."
— Steven Brust (Issola)

"The others followed, and found themselves in a small, stuffy basement, which would have been damp, smelly, close, and dark, were it not, in fact, well-lit, which prevented it from being dark."
— Steven Brust (The Phoenix Guards)

"You can't put something together again unless you've torn it apart first."
— Steven Brust

"When I say that life is like an onion, I mean this: if you don't do anything with it, it goes rotten. So far, that's no different from other vegetables. But when an onion goes bad, it can either do it from the inside, or the outside. So sometimes you see one that looks good, but the core is rotten. Other times, you can see a bad spot on it, but if you cut that out, the rest is fine. Tastes sharp, but that's what you paid for, isn't it?"
— Steven Brust (Yendi)

"I guess there's just a time for doing dumb things."
— Steven Brust

"Most people seem to take pleasure in feeling superior to someone. I'm not like that, which pleases me because it makes me feel superior."
— Steven Brust (Jhegaala)