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

by Steven Erikson

‘Generally speaking, people useless at everything else become academics.’

We are gods in our dreams. Disaster strikes when we come to believe the same is true in our real lives.

‘Some people don’t go through their lives searching, Smiles. I’m not looking, because I’m not expecting to find anything. You want meaning? Make it up. You want truth? Invent it. Makes no difference, to anything. Sun comes up, sun goes down. We see one, maybe we don’t see the other, but the sun doesn’t care, does it?’

The culture of attackers seeks submission and demands evidence of that submission as proof of superiority over the subdued. The culture of defenders seeks compliance through conformity, punishing dissenters and so gaining the smug superiority of enforcing silence, and from silence, complicity.’

Fucking regrets. We all have them, don’t we. Live long enough and maybe it’s all we have, all we keep alive in our minds. Spirits below, what a miserable thought.