Gardens of the Moon Quotes

“Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?'
The Imass shrugged before replying.
'I think of futility, Adjunct.'
'Do all Imass think about futility?'
'No. Few think at all.'
'Why is that?'
The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her.
'Because Adjunct, it is futile.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly."
"I want to be a soldier. A hero."
"You'll grow out of it.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.
These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,
a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth
has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories
against dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue my
thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen
and breathe deep the scent of history?
Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.
These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.
We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Ben Adaephon Delat," Pearl said plaintively, "see the last who comes. You send me to my death."
"I know," Quick Ben whispered.
"Flee, then. I will hold them enough to ensure your escape no more."
Quick Ben sank down past the roof.
Before he passed from sight Pearl spoke again. "Ben Adaephon Delat, do you pity me?"
"Yes" he replied softly, then pivoted and dropped down into darkness.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Words are like coin—it pays to hoard."
"Until you die on a bed of gold," Paran said.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Shake your fist all you want but dead is dead.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Too many regrets. Lost chances—and with each one passing the less human we all became, and the deeper into the nightmare of power we all sank.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“And over it all, the butterflies swarmed, like a million yellow-pettalled flowers dancing on swirling winds.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“The Empress expects obedience of her servants, and demands loyalty.’ ‘Any reasonable ruler would have the expectation and the demand the other way round.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Self-righteous wrath had planted more corpses in the ground than an empire could lay claim to,”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“The curse of climbing is discovering how great the distance yet to climb.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Through the gamut of life we struggled for control, for a means to fashion the world around us, an eternal, hopeless hunt for the privilege of being able to predict the shape of our lives.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Convergence,” Tool said. “Power ever draws other power.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“I’m sure they were good men, the ones you lost.” “Good at dying,” he said.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“High house shadow, and a knife in the dark. A new game's begun, or the old one's just turned.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“She'd seen them them all before, those faces. She knew them all, knew the sound of their voices, sounds mired in human emotions, sounds clear and pure with thought, and sounds wavering in that chasm between the two. Is this, she wondered, my legacy? And one day I'll be just one more of those faces, frozen in death and wonder.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Morality was not relative, they claimed, nor even existing solely in the realm of the human condition. No, they proclaimed morality as an imperative of all life, a natural law that was neither the brutal acts of beasts nor the lofty ambitions of humanity, but something other, something unassailable.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“What are gods, after all, if not the perfect victims?”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“I am Crone, eldest of the Moon's Great Ravens, whose eyes have looked upon a hundred thousand years of human folly. Hence my tattered coat and broken beak as evidence of your indiscriminate destruction. I am but a winged witness of your eternal madness.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“All that we were has led us to where we are, but tells us little of where we’re going. Memories are a weight you can never shrug off.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“Silence!” Korbolo snapped. He eyed Duiker. “You are the historian who rode with Coltaine.”

The historian faced him. “I am.”

“You are a soldier.”

“As you say.”

“I do, and so you shall die with these soldiers, in a manner no different-“

“You mean to slaughter ten thousand unarmed men and women, Korbolo Dom?”

“I mean to cripple Tavore before she even sets foot on this continent. I mean to make her too furious to think. I mean to crack that façade so she dreams of vengeance day and night, poisoning her every decision.”

“You always fashioned yourself as the Empire’s harshest Fist, didn’t you, Korbolo Dom? As if cruelty’s a virtue…”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“He fashioned an empire of sorts, bereft of cities yet plagued with the endless dramas of society, its pathetic victories and inevitable failures. The community of enslaved Imass thrived in this quagmire of pettiness. They even managed to convince themselves that they possessed freedom, a will of their own that could shape destiny. They elected champions. They tore down their champions once failure draped its shroud over them. They ran in endless circles and called it growth, emergence, knowledge. While over them all, a presence invisible to their eyes, Raest flexed his will. His greatest joy came when his slaves proclaimed him god – though they knew him not – and constructed temples to serve him and organized priesthoods whose activities mimicked Raest’s tyranny with such cosmic irony that the Jaghut could only shake his head.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Tattersail smiled. "The only death I fear is dying ignorant.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“The Emperor is dead!
So too his right hand - now cold, now severed!
But mark these dying shadows,
twinned and flowing bloody and beaten,
down and away from mortal sight...
From sceptre's rule dismissed,
from gild candelabra the light now fled,
from a hearth ringed in hard jewels
seven years this warmth has bled...

The Emperor is dead.
So too his master'd companion, the rope cut clean.
But mark this burgeoning return -
faltering dark, the tattered shroud -
embracing children in Empire's dying light.
Hear now the dirge faint reprised,
before the sun's fall, this day spills red
on buckled earth, and in obsidian eyes
vengeance chimes seven times..."
―Call to Shadow, Felisin (I.i. 1-18)”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“long ago, there’d been choices he could have made that would have sent him on a different path. But those days were dead, and the future held only nights, a stretch of darkness that led down to the eternal dark. He would meet Vorcan, eventually, and he’d swear his life to the Guild Master, and that would be that, the closing of the final door. And his sense of outrage at the injustices around him, the corruptions of the world, would wither in the unlit tunnels beneath Darujhistan. In the exactness of the methods of assassination, his final victim would be himself.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“Play on, mortal. Every god falls at a mortal’s hands. Such is the only end to immortality.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“«Such is the irony of life,» Kruppe proclaimed, raising one pastry-filled hand over his head, «that one learns to distrust the obvious, surrendering instead to insidious suspicion and confused conclusion. But, is Kruppe deceived? Can an eel swim? Hurrah, these seeming muddy waters are home to Kruppe, and his eyes are wide with wonder.»”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“I hear Seven Cities natives grow fruit just so they can eat the larvae in them.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon