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

by Steven Erikson

worship is nothing more than the surrender to things beyond our control. He says the comfort from that is false, because there is nothing comfortable in the struggle to live.

Choices fall away, without you even noticing, until there are very few left, and you realize that you are nothing but what you are.’

‘If all honest observation ends up sounding critical, is it the honesty you then reject, or the act of observation?’

She keeps talking about babies but I don’t want babies – they get in the way of having fun, and people who end up having them spend all day talking about how great it is, but they look miserable even when they’re smiling. Or worse, there’re those ones who think their baby is the God of Genius reborn and even its poo smells like flowers, and all they do is talk about them for ever and ever and it’s so boring I want to run away, or break their necks, or drown them all in the slop bucket.’

‘Not even the dead know the end to war.’

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

Nostalgia was like a disease, one that crept in and stole the colour from the world and the time you lived in. Made for bitter people. Dangerous people, when they wanted back what never was.

‘“In a war between fanatics and sceptics, the fanatics win every time.”’

‘It is not enough to wish for a better world for the children. It is not enough to shield them with ease and comfort. Lostara Yil, if we do not sacrifice our own ease, our own comfort, to make the future’s world a better one, then we curse our own children. We leave them a misery they do not deserve; we leave them a host of lessons unearned.

Our worlds are so small. They only feel endless because our minds can gather thousands of them all at once. But if we stop moving, if we hold to one place, if we draw breath and look around … each one is the same. Barring a few details. Lost ages are neither more nor less profound than the one we live in right now. We think it’s all some kind of forward momentum, endless leaving behind and reaching towards. But the truth is, wherever we find ourselves – with all its shiny gifts – we do little more than walk in circles.

‘We should all live a life of hobbies. Doing only what gives us pleasure, only what rewards us in secret, private ways.’

‘You can’t steer anyone away from the path they’re going to take. You can show ’em that there’s plenty of other paths – you can do that much – but past that? They’ll go where they go.’

Will we ever see them again?’ ‘It’s easy, Saddic,’ she said. ‘Just close your eyes.’