Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)

by Steven Erikson

You dream that with memories will come knowledge, and from knowledge, understanding. But for every answer you find, a thousand new questions arise. All that we were has led us to where we are, but tells us little of where we’re going. Memories are a weight you can never shrug off.”

Though I appreciate the intellectual stimulation of each answer exploding into new questions, I wish that memories were not a weight you can never shrug off.

I am a coward—the offer of freedom, the sighing end to a lifetime’s vow, proved the greatest terror of all. And so, the simple truth…the tracks we have walked in for so long become our lives, in themselves a prison—

I’m not sure if this is true cowardice - remaining in our long-walked tracks. But true bravery, perhaps, is the willingness to exit those deep furrows.