The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #10)

by Steven Erikson

Balance has an eternal enemy, and its name is ambition.

But if it must be so, one can strive for other things. Like respect. Or even fear. Choices fall away, without you even noticing, until there are very few left, and you realize that you are nothing but what you are.’

‘What you seek not to let down, Captain, is your sense of yourself. How you see yourself, even when you see yourself through the eyes of the people around you.’

If you knew the thought in your head Would you have spoken it?

And what have we learned? Only that life is its own purpose. And that, where there is life, there shall be suffering. Has it any meaning? Is existence reason enough?

Walk until something bars your path. Then stand, until you fall. Whoever said life was complicated?

We were never what people could be. We were only what we were.