Midnight Tides Quotes

“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

“Fear bespeaks of wisdom. Recognition of responsibility.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“When one does not know what one seeks, caution is the surest armour.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“To achieve peace, destruction is delivered. To give the gift of freedom, one promises eternal imprisonment. Adjudication obviates the need for justice. This is a studied, deliberate embrace of diametric opposition. It is a belief in balance, a belief asserted with the conviction of religion. But in this case, the proof of a god’s power lies not in the cause but in the effect. Accordingly, in this world and in all others, proof is achieved by action, and therefore all action— including the act of choosing inaction— is inherently moral. No deed stands outside the moral context. At the same time, the most morally perfect act is the one taken in opposition to what has occurred before.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“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

“Time was such an element, she now believed. The stretch of existence between events, consisting of countless other events, all strung together in complex patterns of cause and effect, all laid out like images sewn onto a tapestry, creating a sequence of scenes that, once one stood back, was revealed to be co-existing. Present all at once.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“as if the only genuine gestures were the small ones, the ones devoid of an audience. As if true honesty belonged to solitude, since to be witnessed was to perform, and performance was inherently false since it invited expectation.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Oh, we talk of progress, but what we really desire is the perpetuation of the present”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Witness.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides