Scott Hitchcock > Scott 's Quotes

“Children are dying."
Lull nodded. "That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“Take any segment of population, impose strict yet clear definitions on their particular characteristics, then target them for compliance. Bribe the weak to expose the strong. Kill the strong, and the rest are yours. Move on to the next segment”
― Steven Erikson, Reaper's Gale

“Shock and surprise, my little beauties, and quickness to strike, and lack of pity. These are the things that make a killer.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“The lesson of history is that no one learns.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“The trouble with Ascendants is that they try to rig every game. Of course, we delight in . . . uncertainty.” A”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid.” “The”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Marionettes dance afield beneath masterly hands— I stumble among them crossed by the strings in tangled two-step and curse all these fools in their mad pirouette— I shall not live as they do oh, no, leave me in my circled dance— these unbidden twitchings you see I swear on Hood’s Grave is artistry in motion S”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“One conversation, here on the surface, yet another beneath. The priest and the mage are playing games, the entwining of suspicion with knowledge. Heboric sees a pattern, his plundering of ghostly lives gave him what he needed, and I think he’s telling Kulp that the mage himself is closer to that pattern than he might imagine. “Here, wielder of Meanas, take my invisible hand…” Felisin”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“It’s the ignorant who find a cause and cling to it, for within that is the illusion of significance. Faith, a king, queen or Emperor, or vengeance…all the bastion of fools. The”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“Tool interrupted, ‘do you mock me, or your own ignorance? Not even the lichen of the tundra is at peace. All is struggle, all is war for dominance. Those who lose, vanish.”
― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“The power of faith is the fear of the unknown. The power of love is the fear of dying alone.”
― Michael R. Fletcher, Beyond Redemption

“The hand of vengeance stayed cold only so long. Any soul possessing a shred of humanity could not help but see the reality behind cruel deliverance, no matter how justified it might have at first seemed. Faces blank in death. Bodies twisted in postures no-one unbroken could achieve. Destroyed lives. Vengeance yielded a mirror to every atrocity, where notions of right and wrong blurred and lost all relevance. He”
― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“You still think like a child, don’t you? Clay figurines sunk to their ankles in the sand, one here, one there, standing just so. One says this, the other says that, then you reach down and rearrange them accordingly. Scenes, vistas, stark with certainty.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“What is government but theft by consent? You’ll be moving in a society of kindred spirits.”
― Scott Lynch, The Republic of Thieves

“I was once told that dreams are worthy things,” said Emancipor, “even if they end up in misery and unending horror.” “Ah, and who told you that?” He shrugged. “My wife.”
― Steven Erikson, The Wurms of Blearmouth

“Extraordinary, how single lives just fold into the whole mess, over and over again, all caught up in the greater swirl. Spinning round and round, and ever downward, it seems. Ever downward. Fools, all of us, to think we can swim clear of that current.”
― Steven Erikson, House of Chains

“Listen carefully. If communication is manipulation, sex is all-out war.”
― Michael R. Fletcher, Beyond Redemption

“While the innocent yearned to lose their innocence, those who had already done so in turn envied the innocent, and knew grief in what they had lost. Between the two, no exchange of truths was possible.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“The Malazan way,’ he breathed. ‘The murderer’s touch. A brush of cloth. A sip of wine. The gleam of a blade as fine as a snake’s tooth. Your name whispered just as you fall into sleep.”
― Ian C. Esslemont, Night of Knives

“You take your natural vices and call them virtues. Of which greed is the most despicable. That and betrayal of commonality. After all, whoever decided that competition is always and without exception a healthy attribute? Why that particular path to self-esteem? Your heel on the hand of the one below. This is worth something? Let me tell you, it’s worth nothing. Nothing lasting. Every monument that exists beyond the moment—no matter which king, emperor or warrior lays claim to it—is actually a testament to the common, to co-operation, to the plural rather than the singular.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Worry not. Sing your songs with all the earnestness you possess. What is talent but the tongue that never ceases its wag? Look upon us poets and see how we are as dogs in the sun, licking our own behinds with such tender love. Naught else afflicts us but the vapours of our own worries.”
― Steven Erikson, Crack'd Pot Trail

“I choose not to believe in any gods as an act of charity,” Marcus said. “Charity toward whom?” “Toward the gods. Seems rude to think they couldn’t make a world better than this,”
― Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path

“But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it’s not corruption at all—it’s law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“Sometimes the hand pulls the puppet, sometimes the puppet pulls the hand, but the string runs both ways.”
― Daniel Abraham, A Shadow in Summer

“It is not cynical to admit that the past has been turned into a fiction. It is a story, not a fact. The real has been erased. Whole eras have been added and removed. Wars have been aggrandized, and human struggle relegated to the margins. Villains are redressed as heroes. Generous, striving, imperfect men and women have been stripped of their flaws or plucked of their virtues and turned into figurines of morality or depravity. Whole societies have been fixed with motive and vision and equanimity where there was none. Suffering has been recast as noble sacrifice!”
― Josiah Bancroft, Arm of the Sphinx

“Conviction is a fist of stone at the heart of all things. Its form is shaped by sure hands, the detritus quickly swept from view. It is built to withstand, built to defy challenge, and when cornered it fights without honour. There is nothing more terrible than conviction.”
― Steven Erikson, Forge of Darkness

“No purer artist exists or has ever existed than a child freed to imagine. This scattering of sticks in the dust, that any adult might kick through without a moment’s thought, is in truth the bones of a vast world, clothed, fleshed, a fortress, a forest, a great wall against which terrible hordes surge and are thrown back by a handful of grim heroes. A nest for dragons, and these shiny smooth pebbles are their eggs, each one home to a furious, glorious future. No creation was ever raised as fulfilled, as brimming, as joyously triumphant, and all the machinations and manipulations of adults are the ghostly recollections of childhood and its wonders, the awkward mating to cogent function, reasonable purpose; and each façade has a tale to recount, a legend to behold in stylized propriety. Statues in alcoves fix sombre expressions, indifferent to every passer-by. Regimentation rules these creaking, stiff minds so settled in habit and fear.”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“Elend: I kind of lost track of time…
Breeze: For two hours?
Elend: There were books involved.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

“One day, I will be a child again. Carved toys will caper and dance from my mind, out across rock I will raise as mountains. Through grasses I will proclaim forests. For too long I have been trapped in this world of measures, proportions and scale. For too long I have known and understood the limits of what is possible, so cruel in rejecting all that can be imagined. In this way, friend, we are each of us not one but two lives, for ever locked in mortal combat, and from all things at hand, we make weapons.’ - Hust Henarald”
― Steven Erikson, Forge of Darkness