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

by Steven Erikson

We’ll catch a plague if we stay here much longer.’ ‘Let’s hope it’s the bluetongue, then,’ Kalam said. ‘What’s that?’ ‘Your tongue swells up and turns blue,’ Fiddler explained. ‘What’s so good about that?’ ‘You can’t talk.’

Importance lies solely in the deeds done, the goals achieved. Time is preparation, nothing more. One prepares for as long as is required.

Indolence takes many forms, but it comes to every civilization that has outlived its will.

Words can so easily glide over mayhem and terror and horror, it’s a wonder trust exists at all.

‘Victory tastes sweetest in the absence of haunting memories, Bult. Savour it.’

‘You can view the past as something like a mouldy old book. The closer you get to the beginning, the more fragmented are the pages.

Nastiness grows like a cancer in any and every organization – human or otherwise, as you well know. And nastiness gets nastier. Whatever evil you let ride becomes commonplace, eventually. Problem is, it’s easier to get used to it than carve it out.’

Darkness was anathema to shadows.

‘That’s a succinct summary of humankind, I’d say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.

Why do the survivors remain anonymous – as if cursed – while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold? Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living.

It’s the ignorant who find a cause and cling to it, for within that is the illusion of significance. Faith, a king, queen or Emperor, or vengeance . . . all the bastion of fools.

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.’

‘Pogroms need no reason, sir, none that can weather challenge, in any case. Difference in kind is the first recognition, the only one needed, in fact. Land, domination, pre-emptive attacks – all just excuses, mundane justifications that do nothing but disguise the simple distinction. They are not us. We are not them.’

It is not the goal that brings pleasure, but the journey taken to achieve it!’

We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again . . .