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

by Steven Erikson

Giving advice to a child is like flinging sand at an obsidian wall. Nothing sticks. The brutal truth is that we each suffer our own lessons – they can’t be danced round. They can’t be slipped past. You cannot gift a child with your scars – they arrive like webs, constricting, suffocating, and that child will struggle and strain until they break. No matter how noble your intent, the only scars that teach them anything are the ones they earn themselves.’

And consider this one truth … of iron, silver, bronze and gold, it is the gold that melts first.