Joel Jorden > Joel's Quotes

“All of us steal our lives. A little here, a little there. Some of it given, most of it taken. We wear ourselves like a coat of many patches, fraying at the edges, in constant repair. While we shore up one belief, we let go another. We are the stories we tell to ourselves. Nothing more.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

“We’re all the story we tell about ourselves, silly.” Another wave rocked them. “That’s all anyone ever is—the story they tell, and the stories told about them. Fiction captures more than facts do. That’s why the library keeps it. It’s the most important part of our memories.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

“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

“Every story instructs. The teller ignores this truth at peril.”
― Steven Erikson, House of Chains

“I pray that doubt comes to you, that it tempers you with its wisdom. Those heroes in our legends, Karsa Orlong, they were terrible, they were monsters, for they were strangers to uncertainty”
― Steven Erikson, House of Chains

“Show me a god that does not demand mortal suffering.
Show me a god that celebrates diversity, a celebration that embraces even non-believers, and is not threatened by them.
Show me a god that understands the meaning of peace. In life, not in death.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“Well, the world can go fuck itself.”
― Steven Erikson, Reaper's Gale

“The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“The beast that was civilization ever faced forward, and in making its present world it devoured the world to come. It was an appalling truth that one’s own children could be so callously sacrificed to immediate comforts, yet this was so and it had always been so.”
― Steven Erikson, Dust of Dreams

“Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.’ ‘Passive.’ ‘Of a sort, yes. It is more a matter of warning off potential adversaries. In effect, you are saying: Be careful how close you tread. You cannot hurt me, but if I am pushed hard enough, I will wound you. In some things you must never yield, but these things are not eternally changeless or explicitly inflexible; rather, they are yours to decide upon, yours to reshape if you deem it prudent. They are immune to the pressure of others, but not indifferent to their arguments. Weigh and gauge at all times, and decide for yourself value and worth. But when you sense that a line has been crossed by the other person, when you sense that what is under attack is, in fact, your self-esteem, then gird yourself and stand firm.”
― Steven Erikson, Dust of Dreams

“All of us in our secret hearts, in our empty moments of contemplation, stumble into the understanding that nothing matters. There’s a cold shock of realisation and, in that moment, we know that nothing at all is of the least consequence. Ultimately, we’re all just spinning our wheels, seeking to avoid pain until the clock winds down and our time is spent. To give someone purpose is to free them, however briefly, from the spectre of that knowledge.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

“There is, inside me, an unanswered ache, small but constant, caused by no particular trial or tribulation, simply by the burden of existence, the effort of holding aloft my own sky. Each of us is Atlas and why some are crushed and others effortless is a mystery whose answer will not translate into my tongue. Existential, by Jesper Lodin”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“The greater tragedy of our world is not the victims of cruelty, but that so many of those victims would, given the opportunity, stand in the shoes of their oppressors and wield the same whip with equal enthusiasm.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Do not seek to find hope among your leaders. They are the repositories of poison. Their interest in you extends only so far as their ability to control you. From you, they seek duty and obedience, and they will ply you with the language of stirring faith. They seek followers, and woe to those who question, or voice challenge. ‘Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin. And people die.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“You are frowning. Why?’ ‘Well, I’ve already killed a god today,’ Iron Bars said. ‘If I’d known this was going to be a day for killing gods, I might have paced myself better.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“I advised you to not look for hope from your leaders, for they shall feed you naught but lies. Yet hope exists. Seek for it, Brys Beddict, in the one who stands at your side, from the stranger upon the other side of the street. Be brave enough to endeavour to cross that street. Look neither skyward nor upon the ground. Hope persists, and its voice is compassion, and honest doubt.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Survivors do not mourn together. They each mourn alone, even when in the same place. Grief is the most solitary of all feelings. Grief isolates, and every ritual, every gesture, every embrace, is a hopeless effort to break through that isolation.
None of it works. The forms crumble and dissolve.
To face death is to stand alone.”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“It is because we understand you, Toblakai, that we do not set the Hounds upon you. You bear your destiny like a standard, a grisly one, true, but then, its only distinction is in being obvious. Did you know that we too left civilization behind? The scribblers were closing in on all sides, you see. The clerks with their purple tongues and darting eyes, their shuffling feet and sloped shoulders, their bloodless lists. Oh, measure it all out! Acceptable levels of misery and suffering!’ The cane swung down, thumped hard on the ground. ‘Acceptable? Who the fuck says any level is acceptable? What sort of mind thinks that?’
Karsa grinned. ‘Why, a civilized one.’
‘Indeed!’ Shadowthrone turned to Cotillion. ‘And you doubted this one!”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“When I began this journey, I was young. I believed in one thing. I believed in glory. I know now, 'Siballe, that glory is nothing. Nothing. This is what I now understand.'
'What else do you now understand, Karsa Orlong?'
'Not much. Just one other thing. The same cannot be said for mercy.”
― steven erikson, House of Chains

“Death is not an unkind fate,’ Darist said above him. ‘If she was a friend, you will miss her company, and that is the true source of your grief - your sorrow is for yourself. My words may displease you, but I speak from experience. I have felt the deaths of many of my kin, and I mourn the spaces in my life where they once stood. But such losses serve only to ease my own impending demise.”
― Steven Erikson, House of Chains

“If she was a friend, you will miss her company, and that is the true source of your grief—your sorrow is for yourself.”
― Steven Erikson, House of Chains

“Never, dear gods. Never mess with mortals.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“All that is worshipped is but a reflection of the worshipper.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“He lifted up another card and set it down before him. 'Priest of Life, hah, now that's a good one. Game's done.'
'Who wins?' the Adjunct, her face pale as candlewax, asked in a whisper.
'Nobody,' Fiddler replied. 'That's Life for you.' He suddenly rose, tottered, then staggered for the door.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one’s own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage along a foul, tortured path – made foul and tortured by our own indifference – is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come. I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us – each of us, my friends – to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing – all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“The gentler and kinder the god, the more harsh and cruel its worshippers, for they hold to their conviction with taut certainty, febrile in its extremity, and so cannot abide dissenters. They will kill, they will torture, in that god’s name. And see in themselves no conflict, no matter how bloodstained their hands.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“The existance of many gods conveys true complexity of mortal life. Conversely, the assertion of but one god leads to a denial of complexity, and encourages the need to maek the world simple. Not the fault of the god, but a crime commited by its believers.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“Compassion existed when and only when one could step outside oneself, to suddenly see the bars from inside the cage.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“Why is it, I wonder, that organizations such as yours are invariably run by pitiful human failures? By small-minded psychotics and perverts. All bullied as children, of course. Or abused by twisted parents – I’m sure you have terrible tales to confess, of your miserable youth. And now the power is in your hands, and oh how the rest of us suffer.”
― Steven Erikson, Reaper's Gale