House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #4)

by 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 weed, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself.’

Form an opinion, say it often enough and pretty soon everyone’s saying it right back at you, and then it becomes a conviction, fed by unreasoning anger and defended with weapons of fear. At which point, words become useless and you’re left with a fight to the death.’

One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.’

freedom ensured happiness. Indeed, to be free was to live in absence. Of responsibilities, of loyalties, of the pressures that expectation imposed.

‘If she was a friend, you will miss her company, and that is the true source of your grief — your sorrow is for yourself.

it is human nature to transform loss into a virtue. So that it might be lived with, so that it might be justified.

What matter the colour of the collar around a man’s neck, if the chains linked to them were identical?

Drunken oblivion was, each time, a small, temporary death. Hood walked where the self once stood, and the wake of the god’s passage sickened mortal flesh afterwards.

Love changes, aye, in the manner of growing to encompass as much of its subject as possible. Virtues, flaws, limitations, everything — love will fondle them all, with child-like fascination.’

To grieve is a gift best shared. As a song is shared.