Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8)

by Steven Erikson

It was a quirk of blind optimism that held that someone broken could, in time, heal, could reassemble all the pieces and emerge whole, perhaps even stronger for the ordeal. Certainly wiser, for what else could be the reward for suffering? The notion that did not sit well, with anyone, was that one so broken might remain that way – neither dying (and so removing the egregious example of failure from all mortal eyes) nor improving. A ruined soul should not be stubborn, should not cling to what was clearly a miserable existence. Friends recoil. Acquaintances drift away. And the one who fell finds a solitary world, a place where no refuge could be found from loneliness when loneliness was the true reward of surviving for ever maimed, for ever weakened.