Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #9)

by Steven Erikson

The real world, he comprehended with a shock, was not what he saw, not what he interacted with instant by instant. The real world was unknowable.

‘There is no single god. There can never be a single god. For there to be one face, there must be another. The Nah’ruk did not see it in such terms, of course. They spoke of forces in opposition, of the necessity of tension. All that binds must be bound to two foci, at the minimum. Even should a god exist alone, isolated in its perfection, it will come to comprehend the need for a force outside itself, beyond its omniscience. If all remains within, Destriant – exclusively within, that is – then there is no reason for anything to exist, no reason for creation itself. If all is ordered, untouched by chaos, then the universe that was, is and will ever be, is without meaning. Without value. The god would quickly comprehend, then, that its own existence is also without meaning, and so it would cease. It would succumb to the logic of despair.’

choice is the singular moral act and all one chooses can only be considered in a moral context if that choice is free.’