Steven Erikson > Quotes

“Kallor said: 'I 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.”
― Steven Erikson

“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.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“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.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one's own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage alone a foul, tortured path...is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“Wise words are like arrows flung at your forehead. What do you do? Why, you duck of course.”
― Steven Erikson, House of Chains

“[T]he unnamed soldier is a gift. The named soldier-dead, melted wax-demands a response among the living...a response no-one can make. Names are no comfort, they're a call to answer the unanswerable. Why did she die, not him? Why do the survivors remain anonymous-as if cursed-while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?
Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living. ”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“Save your explanations, I got some questions for you first and you'd better answer them!' [slurred Hellian.]
'With what?' [Banaschar] sneered. 'Explanations?'
'No. Answers. There's a difference-'
'Really? How? What difference?'
'Explanations are what people use when they need to lie. Y'can always tell those,'cause those don't explain nothing and then they look at you like they just cleared things up when really they did the opposite and they know it and you know it and they know you know and you know they know that you know and they know you and you know them and maybe you go out for a pitcher later but who picks up the tab? That's what I want to know.'
'Right, and answers?'
'Answers is what I get when I ask questions. Answers is when you got no choice. I ask, you tell. I ask again, you tell some more. Then I break your fingers, 'cause I don't like what you're telling me, because those answers don't explain nothing!”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“War has its necessities...and I have always understood that. Always known the cost. But, this day, by my own hand, I have realized something else. 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.”
― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“The future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises.”
― Steven Erikson

“Gods, I wish the world was full of passive women.He thougt for a moment longer, then scowled. On second thoughts, what a nightmare that'd be. It's the job of a man to fan the spark into flames, not quench it...”
― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“With the Black Company series Glen Cook single-handedly changed the face of fantasy—something a lot of people didn’t notice and maybe still don’t. He brought the story down to a human level, dispensing with the cliché archetypes of princes, kings, and evil sorcerers. Reading his stuff was like reading Vietnam War fiction on peyote.”
― Steven Erikson

“Seven Cities was an ancient civilization, steeped in the power of antiquity, where Ascendants once walked on every trader track, every footpath, every lost road between forgotten places. It was said the sands hoarded power within their sussurating currents, that every stone had soaked up sorcery like blood, and that beneath every city lay the ruins of countless other cities, older cities, cities that went back to the First Empire itself. It was said each city rose on the backs of ghosts, the substance of spirits thick like layers of crushed bone; that each city forever wept beneath the streets, forever laughed, shouted, hawked wares and bartered and prayed and drew first breaths that brought life and the last breaths that announced death. Beneath the streets there were dreams, wisdom, foolishness, fears, rage, grief, lust and love and bitter hatred.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“And over it all, the butterflies swarmed, like a million yellow-pettalled flowers dancing on swirling winds.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.”
― Steven Erikson, House of Chains

“Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortal's shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched before one now stretched before him.”
― Steven Erikson

“First in , Last out.


Motto of the bridgeburners”
― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering, all wondering, at my secret wellspring of wisdom...'
Let's kill him,' Crokus muttered, 'if only to put him out of our misery.”
― Steven Erikson

“The lesson of history is that no one learns.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“Such is the vastness of his genius that he can outwit even himself.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail - should we fall - we will know that we have lived.”
― Steven Erikson

“There's little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious thing, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself." "With words.”
― Steven Erikson

“Did you think it was my intention to murder Whiskey Jack? Do you think I just cut down honourable men and loyal soldiers out of spite? ... They got in my way, damn you! Just as you're doing now! ...

The Tiste andii's faint smile nearly broke Kallor's heart. No, he understands. All to well. This will be his last battle, in Rake's name, and anyone's name.
Kallor drew out his sword. "Does it occur, to any of you, what these things do to me? No, of course not. the High King is cursed to fail, but never to fall. the High King is but... What? Oh, the physical manifestiation of ambition. Walking proof of its inevitable price. Fine." he readied his two handed weapon.

"Fuck you, too".”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“The Wickans know that the gift of power is never free. They know enough not to envy the chosen among them, for power is never a game, nor are glittering standards raised to glory and wealth. They disguise nothing in trappings, and so we all see what we'd rather not, that power is cruel, hard as iron and bone, and thrives on destruction. ~ Deadhouse Gates”
― Steven Erikson

“Ben Adaephon Delat," Pearl said plaintively, "see the last who comes. You send me to my death."
"I know," Quick Ben whispered.
"Flee, then. I will hold them enough to ensure your escape no more."
Quick Ben sank down past the roof.
Before he passed from sight Pearl spoke again. "Ben Adaephon Delat, do you pity me?"
"Yes" he replied softly, then pivoted and dropped down into darkness.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Oh, measure it all out! Acceptable levels of misery and suffering!' The cane swung down, thumped hard on the ground. 'Acceptable? Who the fuck says any level is acceptable? What sort of mind thinks that?'

Karsa grinned, 'Why, a civilized one.'

'Indeed!' Shadowthrone turned to Cotillion. 'And you doubted this one!”
― Steven Erikson

“Survivors do not mourn together. They each mourn alone, even when in the same place. Grief is the most solitary of all feelings. Grief isolates, and every ritual, every gesture, every embrace, is a hopeless effort to break through that isolation.
None of it works. The forms crumble and dissolve.
To face death is to stand alone.”
― Steven Erikson

“So you say, with your shiny hair and pouty lips - and those breasts - just wait till you start dropping whelps, they'll be at your ankles one day, big as they are - not the whelps, the breasts. The whelps will be in your hair - no, not the shiny hair on your head, well, yes, that hair, but only as a manner of speech.”
― Steven Erikson, House of Chains

“I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intention, you nurture it.”
― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“It is one thing to lead by example with half a dozen soldiers at your back. It is wholly another with ten thousand.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, T’lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the wold. It must be given freely. In abundance.”
― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Desires should never be justified,' Tehol said, wagging a finger. 'All you end up doing is illuminating the hidden reasons by virtue of their obvious absence.”
― Steven Erikson

“For Hood's sake,' the foreigner muttered. 'What's wrong with words?' 'With words,' said Redmask, turning away, 'meanings change.' 'Well,' Anaster Toc said, following as Redmask made his way back to his army's camp,.. 'that is precisely the point. That's their value - their ability to adapt -' 'Grow corrupt, you mean. The Letheri are masters at corrupting words, their meanings. They call war peace, they call tyranny liberty. On which side of the shadow you stand decides a word's meaning. Words are the weapons used by those who see others with contempt. A contempt which only deepens when they how those others are deceived and made into fools because they choose to believe. Because in their naivety they thought the meaning of a word was fixed, immune to abuse.”
― Steven Erikson

“First in, last out.”
― Steven Erikson

“Ah, Fist, it’s the curse of history that those who should read them, never do.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly."
"I want to be a soldier. A hero."
"You'll grow out of it.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Tis the grand stupidity of our kind, dear Cutter, to see all the errors of our ways, yet find in ourselves the inability to do anything about them. We sit, dumbfounded by despair, and for all our ingenuity, our perceptivity, for all our extraordinary capacity to see the truth of things, we hunker down like snails in a flood, sucked tight to our precious pebble, fearing the moment is is dislodged beneath us. Until that terrible calamity, we do nothing but cling.
"Can you even imagine a world where all crimes are punished? Where justice is truly blind and holds out no hands happy to yield to the weight of coin and influence? Where one takes responsibility for his or her mistakes, acts of negligence, the deadly consequences of indifference or laziness? Nay, instead we slip and duck, dance and dodge, dance the dodge slip duck dance, feet ablur. Ourselves transformed into shadows that flit in chaotic discord. We are indeed masters of evasion--no doubt originally a survival trait, at least in the physical sense, but to have such instincts applied to the soul is perhaps our most egregious crime against morality. What we will do so that we may continue living with ourselves. In this we might assert that a survival trait can ultimately prove its own antithesis, and in the cancelling out thereof, why, we are left with the blank, dull, vacuous expression that Kruppe sees before him."
~Kruppe,”
― Steven Erikson

“She'd seen them them all before, those faces. She knew them all, knew the sound of their voices, sounds mired in human emotions, sounds clear and pure with thought, and sounds wavering in that chasm between the two. Is this, she wondered, my legacy? And one day I'll be just one more of those faces, frozen in death and wonder.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“I hear Seven Cities natives grow fruit just so they can eat the larvae in them.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Every gift is edged.”
― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And, indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again."
~Fiddler, pg. 558”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“Shake your fist all you want but dead is dead”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“I've never believed in American skies, but I've always beleived in America.”
― Steven Erikson

“It is an extraordinary act of courage,' said Tulas Shorn, 'to come to know a stranger's pain.”
― Steven Erikson

“And in the city on all sides, the howling of the Hounds rose in an ear-shattering, soul-flailing crescendo. The Lord of Death had arrived, to walk the streets in the City of Blue Fire.”
― Steven Erikson

“Fallen. who tracks our footsteps, I wonder? We who are the forgotten, the discounted and the ignored. When the path is failure, it is never willingly taken. The fallen. Why does my heart weep for them? Not them but us, for most assuredly I am counted among them. Slaves, serfs, nameless peasants and labourers, the blurred faces in the crowd - just a smear on memory, a scuffing of feet down the side passages of history.
Can one stop, can one turn and force one's eyes to pierce the gloom? And see the fallen? Can one ever see the fallen? And if so, what emotion is born in that moment?"
There were tears on his cheeks, dripping down onto his chafed hands. He knew the answer to that question, knife-sharp and driven deep, and the answer was ... recognistion”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Powiedz mi, Tool, o czym myślisz najczęściej?
Imass wzruszył ramionami. – O bezcelowości, przyboczna.
– Czy wszyscy Imassowie o niej myślą?
– Nie. Większość w ogóle nie myśli.
– A to dlaczego?
Przechylił głowę. – Dlatego, że to bezcelowe, przyboczna.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Pochyleni w wysokich siodłach swych quorlów Czarni Moranthowie lśnili niczym śliskie od krwi diamenty w karmazynowym blasku cienkiej jak miecz smugi jutrzenki.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Kierowała się wówczas instynktem, a jej instynkt nie miał nic wspólnego z altruizmem. Na wojnie altruiści nie żyli długo.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon