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

by Steven Erikson

Is there anything more worthless than excuses? EMPEROR KELLANVED

And this, she now realized, was the reason why the gods did nothing. Proof of their omniscience. After all, to act was to announce awful limitations, for it revealed that chance acted first, the accidents were just that—events beyond the will of the gods—and all they could do in answer was to attempt to remedy the consequences, to alter natural ends. To act, then, was an admission of fallibility.